1 Execution site(s)
Lidia L., born in 1927: “The activists often met in Maria’s house, a local woman, because it was located in an advantageous place near the surrounding forests. But Maria’s neighbor denounced them. One day, the Germans brought 15 men in a car. The victims were burned in Maria’s house along with Maria herself.” (Witness n°2931U, interviewed in Tkhorivka on August 19, 2021)
Tkhorivka is a small village in the Kyiv region, located 100 km (62 miles) southwest of the capital, in central Ukraine. Before the war, it was inhabited by only a few Ukrainian villagers. There was a Jewish community in the nearby town of Skvyra, 8 km (5 miles) northwest of the village, where in 1939, 20% of the total population was Jewish.
On June 22, 1941, the German army and their allies began their invasion of the USSR. Tkhorivka was occupied in mid-July. The German authorities appointed a starosta and local police. In the summer of 1943, the Germans brought 15 men suspected of being partisans to the village. They were taken to the house of Maria, a local resident, where they used to have meetings. The suspects and the Ukrainian woman were all burned alive inside. Unfortunately during our field research we were unable to establish for sure if the victims were Jewish or not. At the end of 1943, as Soviet troops approached, the Germans had the entire local population gather in front of the village church. The villagers were saved from mass execution by the intervention of one of the main local landowners with the German authorities.
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