1 Execution site(s)
Elizaveta P., born in 1921 : “The Germans arrived to the village two weeks after the war broke out. Back then I was 19 years old and I was married. I had a six-month-old baby. The Germans arrived on foot and by motor. They entered the village calmly: there was no resistance. The first Germans didn’t stay long here, maybe two or three days, and then they left. They continued their way further to the East.
YIU: Were there other Germans who arrived and stationed in your village?
W: No, there wasn’t any German in our village. The Germans were in the village of Lemeshivka, 5km away from here. We had only the local police. But you know, these local policemen, who collaborated with the Germans, were even worse than Germans.
YIU: Did they have uniforms and weapons?
W: No, they didn’t. They were dressed in civilian clothes and had batons. But they treated us very badly.” (Witnessn°2659U, interviewed in Mali Kutyscha, on September 14, 2019)
“The Commission opened the mass grave located on the territory of the Kutyschi village. The dimensions of the grave are the follows: 1,5 m long, 2m large and 2m deep. The pit was used as an animal remains pit. 16 bodies were found inside the pit, including corpses of elder people, men, women and a child’s body of about 2 years old. The bodies were found in bulk. Most of the corpses were found in underwear, some of them had summer clothing. Some bodies were found in a sitting position, while others were laying with their faces down. Most of the bodies had gunshot wounds in the nape. The commission could determine that the shooting was conducted by the German Gendarmerie and the police from Makhnovka on July 10, 1942.” [Act n°2 drawn up by Soviet State Extraordinary Commission (ChGK) on March 24, 1944; GARF : 7021-54-1246]
Mali Kutyscha is located 53km (33mi) north of Vinnytsia. The first records about the Jewish community go back to the end of the 18th century. The village was mainly home to Ukrainians. According to the local resident interviewed by Yahad, there were only four Jewish families in the village, one of which moved to Zhytomyr before WWII. The Jews owned the mill and shops. They didn’t have a synagogue nor a cemetery.
Mali Kutyscha was occupied by the German troops in mid-July 1941 and remained under the German occupation until its liberation in early March 1944. According to the witness, there were no Germans stationed in the village, but only local policemen. There was an execution conducted near Mali Kutyscha on July 10, 1942. During this execution 16 Jews, men, women and children, were rounded-up and shot in the pit, that, according to the Yahad’s witness, was dug by the Jews themselves. According to the same witness they were Jews from Pykiv who came into the village to hide. It remains unclear whether the local Jews were shot along with the Jews found in hiding, or whether they were taken to another place. The execution was conducted by one German gendarme and policemen who came from the village of Makhnivka by truck. Today, there is no marker on the site.
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