2 Execution site(s)
Zinaida K., born in 1928, recalls: “I saw an execution of Jews from my vegetable garden. The field where the Jews were shot was located 300m away from our garden. About 30 men, women and children were killed by the Hungarians. They were divided in two groups and killed in two pits that had been dug in advance. Each group stayed around the pit and when the Hungarians fired with submachine guns, they fell directly into it. But it was not the only time that Jews were shot. As far as I remember there were two or three executions.” (Testimony n°1647, interviewed in Kozhushky on April 28th, 2013)
Kolodyanka is a village located 110 km west of Zhytomyr. The earliest known Jewish community dates back to the late 18th century. The Jews were merchants or artisans. Some worked on the mill. There was no synagogue, but the Jews were religious. The Jewish children went to the same school as non-Jews. In 1926 the Jewish population numbered 41 people. The village was occupied by the German army in July 1941.
Immediately after the occupation, all Jewish men were gathered and forced to do manual labor: road construction at the beginning, and then deforestation. Once there was no need of their labor, they were killed, supposedly in the same forest. The remaining Jews from the village along with those from the nearby villages were killed in September, 1941. According to the local witnesses interviewed by Yahad, about 250 Jews were, first locked up for 5 days in the cellar located not far away from the railroad, and then were shot in the pit dug by themselves. The execution was conducted by the SS unit. The shootings lasted for about two weeks, besides the isolated shootings that were conducted against the Jews who had managed to stay in hiding until then.
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