1 Execution site(s)
Ksenia K., born in 1922: "In the summer of 1943, several inhabitants of our village were requisitioned to dig a pit under German supervision. It was dug on the edge of the nearby forest, some fifty meters from the road. When it was ready, around midday, I saw a cart with young Jewish boys and girls, some of them teenagers, being transported from the village of Pogorila towards the execution site. I heard them speaking in the Jewish language. Once they arrived at the site, they were lined up on one side of the pit, facing it, before being shot by two Germans armed with machine guns. Local residents waited nearby to fill the pit after the execution." (Testimony N°YIU1114U, interviewed in Pogorila, on December 22 2010)
Pogorila, situated approximately 146 km (91 mi) southeast of Vinnytsia, near the border with the Cherkasy region, had a scant Jewish presence before the war. According to accounts from local residents interviewed by Yahad, the village was predominantly inhabited by Ukrainians, although there was one Jewish family, which included two sisters and one brother. The majority of the local population were involved in farming and agricultural activities, whereas the Jewish residents were employed at the local sugar factory.
Pogorila fell under German occupation in July 1941, transitioning from military to civil administration shortly thereafter. Local Jews were hidden by Ukrainian inhabitants of Pogorila throughout the occupation period.
According to accounts from local witnesses, several months after the occupation began, around the summer of 1942, a Jewish labor camp was established near the sugar factory of Pogorila (in a barn/school). This camp housed several dozen Jews presumably brought from the Romanian-occupied zone. Overseen by German guards, Jewish prisoners were forced to work on the DGIV highway, connecting Vinnytsia to Uman.
The camp was most probably liquidated in the summer of 1943, when several dozen Jews, including children and teenagers, were murdered during an Aktion conducted by the Germans. The victims were transported by carts to a nearby forest along the road connecting Pogorila and Ositna villages, where they were forced to line up at the edge of a pit previously dug by requisitioned local residents and shot to death by the Germans. The pit was then filled in by the same local residents.
As there were many children and teenagers among the victims, it is possible that some other Jewish camp inmates, deemed fit for work, were transferred to other labor camps set up in the area, as was common practice in the region.
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