1 Execution site(s)
Rosalia K. remembered: “I think that the Jews stayed in the ghetto one week. One Sunday, the Jews were gathered in the synagogue with their valuables and sent to the train station. It was winter. The Jews walked in columns to the train station followed by a truck which carried the disabled people. From my window, I saw that the Jews who tried to escape were shot by the Germans” (Witness N°722, interviewed in Shchyrets, on January 4, 2009).
"Around November 1942, in the village of Shchyrets, the German Gestapo organized an action against the Jews. After that action, 863 people were gathered and taken by train in the direction of Lviv. 32 people were shot in the streets of Shchyrets, I had to carry their bodies to a grave in the Jewish cemetery. One month later, 20 Jews were shot in a pit in the Jewish cemetery." [Deposition of Ivan M., eyewitness of 2 shootings of Jews, December 1944, RG22.022M/7021-67/135]
Shchyrets is located at 29 km from Lviv. There were around 1500 Jewish families in Shchyrets before the war. The Jews lived in the city-center and were merchants. There were two synagogues in the village. The German occupation began in the summer of 1941.
According to Rosalia K. (Witness N°722), the Jews were shot during the liquidation of the ghetto. According to the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, it happened on November 29, 1942. Rosalia K. remembers that there were two graves. Firstly, some Jews had to dig one grave and were thrown into it alive. The second grave wasn’t in the village. Her father was requisitioned to carry the corpses all day long. According to the Soviet archives, the corpses were exhumed later and buried in the Jewish cemetery. As written in the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, the majority of the Jews were deported by train to Belzec.
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