3 Execution site(s)
Genrikh S. recalled : “I saw Jews at the train station being loaded into a train car at this station. The Jews left a warehouse to go to the train cars, following a kind of corridor. They had small suitcases. It was very hot. They were screaming. There were policemen and Germans at the train station, as well as local railway workers.” (Witness N°1817, interviewed in Boryslav, on August 31, 2013).
“The Jews who were designated for execution were brought by the mentioned units to the empty oil shafts, past the slaughterhouses. First, they had to get undressed and lay on their stomachs. Groups of 10-15 people were taken to the grave and were placed at the edge of the grave and killed from behind, with a bullet to the back of the head, with a revolver.” [Deposition of Franz R. taken in Delmenhorst, August 17, 1964, B162-5003].
Boryslav is located about 75km southwest of Lviv. The Jews living in Boryslav worked in the oil industry and in sales. The Zionist organizations were very present and played an important role in the everyday life between the wars. The majority of Jewish children studied in public schools. On the eve of World War II in 1939, there were about 13,000 Jews in the city. The town was occupied by German forces on July 01, 1941.
On the day following the Germans’ arrival, local Ukrainians and Poles, led by German soldiers, murdered approximately 300 Jews. The first anti-Jewish aktions began at the end of November 1941, when around 1500 Jews, the majority of whom were deemed weak and unable to work, were shot by the German security police in the forest near the town of Truskavets. During the winter of 1941-1942, many Jews died of hunger and disease. From the end of July till the beginning of November 1942, about 8.500 Jews from Boryslav and neighboring villages, like Pidbuzh and Skhidnytsya, were sent to the Janowska camp or Belzec. Meanwhile, two separate ghettos were created in Boryslav. During the second aktion in February, 1943, 600 Jews were shot by members of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, German police, and the Schupo. The isolated executions of Jews took place all the time from May till June 1943 until the total liquidation of the Boryslav ghetto at the end of June 1943. Over the course of one week, the German forces murdered around 700 Jews (sick, young and elderly Jews). The remaining Jews were deported to different labor camps (Plaszów and Mauthausen) from April to June 1944. In all, over 10,000 Jews native to Boryslaw were shot by Germans or murdered in the camps.
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