2 Execution site(s)
Fiodor V., born in 1929, remembered: “Shortly after the German arrival, the isolated shootings started. There were two Jewish women who were killed on the spot in their house. They were Germans who killed them. They entered inside the house and, without saying anything, fired at them. Then, they forced the local man who lived close by to bury the bodies in his garden. He did it because he did not have any choice. The next day, he unburied the bodies and buried them in another place.”(Testimony N°686, interviewed in Krynka, on July 18, 2013).
Krynka is located about 150 km northwest of Mogilev. The village was founded in the middle of the 19th century. According to the local residents, there were Jews who lived in the village prior to war. They were artisans or worked in agriculture. There was a children’s tuberculosis sanatorium in the village. On the eve of the war, several dozen children remained in the sanatorium. The Germans occupied the village in early July 1941.
Soon after the German arrival, the children’s tuberculosis sanatorium in Krynka was transformed into a ghetto. All Jewish children from the nearby villages were confined there as well. Children were forced to wear distinguishing yellow stars on their clothes. Due to poor conditions, a number of children died. On April 2, 1942, the children from the ghetto were lined up in two columns and taken on foot, escorted by Germans with dogs, to the ravine in the forest where the requisitioned local residents had dug a pit in advance. Once on the site, they were thrown inside the pit in groups of seven or eight and the Germans fired at them from the edge of the pit. 84 Jewish children were killed that day. According to the witness, there was also a shooting of two local Jews in a garden in Krynka.
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