Demyaniv (Demianov) | Ivano-Frankivsk

Execution of Jews in Demyaniv

1 Killing site(s)

Kind of place before:: Field near the railroads
Memorials:: No
Period of occupation:: 1941-1944
Number of victims:: About 10

Witness interview

Fedir N., born in 1928, says: “At the very beginning of the German occupation, in 1941, my mother and I went to a Jewish tailor Charna who lived behind the synagogue. My mother brought some food to her, because the woman was starving. I spoke with her son while my mother was talking with Charna. Someone knocked hard on the door. The Jewish woman left my mother in another room while she wentto open the door, she was very scared. When she opened the door she saw a Gestapo soldier with a Ukrainian policeman. My mother was taken to the Gestapo and I went with her, and the Jewish woman stayed at home. The soldier shouted a lot, I was crying. My mother was warned and banned from going to the Jewish houses under the threat of being shot. She was told to pass the message to the other villagers.” (Witness testimony n°2099, interviewed in Burshtyn on June 10th, 2016)

Historical note

Demyaniv is located 40 km north of Ivano-Frankivsk. According to the census in 1939, 1,200 people lived there, including only 20 Jews. They lived off small-scale trade or handcraft. According to the witnesses interviewed by Yahad, there was a synagogue, a Jewish school and a cemetery in the neighbor village of Burshtyn, 3 km away. The village of Demyaniv was occupied by the German forces in early July, 1941.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

According to the witness interviewed by Yahad, all local Jews were forced to work for the Germans, they had to dig trenches. With local villagers they also had to construct the roads using grave stones from the Jewish cemetery. The Jews were forbidden to communicate with the locals or to buy food from them. There was no ghetto in the village so almost all local Jews were displaced to the ghettos of the nearing villages, for instance Roghatyn, in late 1941-early 1942. Most likely, they were shot afterwards during one of the Aktions. However, with the help of the local witness Yahad could identify the undocumented site of the isolated shooting of Jews. The victims were nine or ten Jewish men who escaped from the train coming from Nadvirna in the direction of Lviv. Unfortunately, they were caught by Germans assisted by the police on shot in the field not far from the railroads. The shooting was conducted in the summer 1941. The victim’s bodies remain there at the same place without any memorial.

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