1 Execution site(s)
Vera O.: “Residents took the Jewish victims’ valuables in the cemetery after the shooting. They needed these things. They went to the site after the departure of the killers. I heard bursts of gunfire, the shootings lasted an hour. After the shootings, the policemen and the Germans went back to the selsoviet because they had some things to do.” (Witness N°644, interviewed in Shamovo, on June 19, 2013).
Shamovo is located 93 km from Mogilev. Before the war, Shamovo was a Jewish village. There was a Jewish kolkhoz and a Yiddish school, which closed in 1938. Most of the Jews were craftsmen or merchants. The German occupation began in July 1941.
On February 2, 1942, a German unit arrived in the village in order to round up 400 Jews with the assistance of local policemen in the village’s square. Any Jew who refused to leave his or her home was shot on the spot. According to Vera O. (Witness N°644), the Jews were shot in the Jewish cemetery in a deep ditch. There were a number of killers as the group of Jewish victims was quite large. When the Jews understood they were to be killed, they began to scream. The witness remembered hearing loud bursts of gunfire. After the shooting, some locals looted the Jewish valuables at the cemetery.
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