1 Killing site(s)
Nadia H., born in 1924: "I went to the forest with my friend Lusia to look for firewood. We came across the execution site, a large pit had been dug, and there were Germans and policemen guarding the Jews. There were a lot of children. I was around twenty meters behind the shooters when they started killing them. I remember children screaming, "We want to live!".” (Witness n°2803U, interviewed in Moivka, on October 9, 2020)
Moivka is a village, 99km (61mi) southwest of Vinnytsia. The first record of Jews living in the town goes back to the mid-18th century. The village was home to Ukrainians, Poles, and some Jews. The latter lived mainly in the center of Moivka and were engaged in small-scale trade or handcrafts. According to the local villagers, there was no synagogue in the town. In 1929, a Jewish kolkhoz [collective farm] was created in the nearby town of Borivka, where a bigger Jewish community lived. Many Jews worked there. As a result of the Great Famine that ravaged the area in 1932-1933, many Jews left Borivka and moved to bigger towns. On the eve of the Second World War, about fifty Jews remained in the village. Some refugees from Chernivtsi and Mohyliv-Podilskiy arrived in Moivka and stayed there after the war broke out.
Moivka was occupied first by Germans and then by Romanian troops in early July 1941. On August 12, 1941, all the local Jews and some refugees from Mohyliv-Podislki, were gathered and taken to be shot in the woods next to the agricultural fields. The execution was carried out by a German punitive detachment. During the shooting, some local men were requisitioned to dig and fill in the pits. According to the historical sources, there were 53 Jews, including 49 Jews from Moivka and 4 Jews from Mohyliv-Podilsky, murdered at this site, although the memorial mentioned 65.
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