1 Execution site(s)
Vasyl M., born in 1929, recalled: “Once, while we were grazing the cows near the river bank, we saw a column of Jews escorted by two men with batons, one in front and another behind. The column was followed by two Germans in carts. Then, after a German’s order, all the Jews had to kneel down and to graze. The column was going in the direction of Khodoriv.
YIU: Where there children and women in the column?
Vasyl: Yes, there were. Women even held babies" (Witness N°1829, interviewed in Zhuravno, on September 11, 2013).
Zhuravno, established in 1436, is located on the banks of the Dnister and Svich Rivers, about 80km south of Lviv. Prior to the war, 1,300 Jews lived in the village. The majority of Jews lived off of trade, although some of them worked as craftsmen and farmers. According to Vasyl M. (Witness n°1829), there was a Jewish cemetery and a synagogue, which do not exist anymore. The German forces occupied the territory in early July 1941.
Immediately following the Germans’ arrival, all the Jews were registered and marked. They were forced to pay a contribution and assigned to various forced labor, such as work in road construction, at a quarry or an alabaster factory. According to the different sources and Yahad-In Unum’s research results, the majority of Zhuravno’s Jews were deported to the Belzec camp directly or were initially deported to the Stryi ghetto and later to the Belzec camp. The waves of deportations took place from the beginning of September to November 1942. About 160 Jewish specialists were purposefully left and confined to an open ghetto until 1943, when they were executed during two aktions, one in February 1943 and another one in June 1943. The execution site is situated on the outskirts of the village, near the Dnister riverbank. The anti-Jewish aktions were carried out by German Gendarmerie and Ukrainian local police.
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