1 Execution site(s)
Maria R.: "One day in autumn, the Jews were assembled in a shop. A truck came to transfer groups of Jews to the shooting site. A woman who’d escaped from the shop hid in my attic. The Germans found her, dragged her out by her feet, and shot her in the street. (Witness N°503, interviewed in June 2011)
"In the village of Ostrovno, 300 people were shot in the Jewish cemetery, located 600 meters north of the village." [Act of the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission, RG22.022M/7021-84/1]
Ostrovno is a small village located 15 km west of Vitebsk. In 1939, fewer than 300 Jews lived in the village. There was a beautifully constructed wooden synagogue. The place was under German occupation from 1941 to 1943.
Many Jews managed to evacuate before the Germans’ arrival. On July 19, 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of an open ghetto in Ostrovno, comprised of 10 wooden houses. On September 30, 1941, the Jews were rounded up in a shop, and then transported by trucks to the killing site. 169 Jews were killed by members of Einsatzgruppe B in a trench dug during the German invasion near the cemetery. After the mass shooting, the Germans gathered the Jews’ belongings in a city building, and then organized a sale.
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