1 Killing site(s)
Maria Ts., born in 1932: “Before the Germans arrived,
when were saying that they were getting closer, they evacuated everyone to the side of the Dnipro River. Only elderly people, as old as I am today, stayed behind. One day, they were all rounded up by Germans, put in a truck and taken to be shot. I didn’t see the shooting myself, but people talked about it.” (Testimony n°2551U, interviewed in Kamianka, on March 19, 2019)
Viazivka is located 100 km (62mi) north of Zhytomyr. The first record of a Jewish community dates back to the end of the 17th century. At this time, around dozen Jews lived in the village. Most of the Jews lived off trade and handicraft. According to the testimonies of the local villagers, about fifteen Jewish families remained in the village on the eve of the war.
Viazivka was occupied by Wehrmacht troops on August 22, 1941. By that time, the majority of local Jews had managed to evacuate, and men of eligible age were enlisted into the Red Army. There is no historical source or archive mentioning an execution of Jews in Viazivka. With the help of a local witness, Yahad was able to identify an execution site of about ten or twenty elderly Jews, people who were unable to evacuate due their old age, and killed on the grounds of the former collective farm ‘Lenin’. The shooting was conducted in late summer 1941. There is no memorial at the site today.
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