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2 Execution site(s)
Adam C.: “The Jews arrived at the pits in trucks. The executioners were waiting for them on site. They were Germans and local policemen, with a table with food and drink. They drank, ate, shouted... The Jews climbed down into the pit one by one and lay down on the bodies of the previous victims, face towards the body beneath them. There were several shooters who fired with machine guns. The truck made return trips to Shatsk.” (Witness N°785, interviewed in Zadoshchenye, on May 28, 2014).
Shatsk is a village located 56 km southeast of Minsk. Just before the war, the Jewish population numbered probably around 300 people. The Jews were concentrated in the village center, and there was a synagogue that was closed just before the war.
German armed forces occupied the village on June 30, 1941, and a German military administration was set up. After the summer of 1941, the Jews had to move into a ghetto made up of houses. The ghetto was fenced with barbed wire. German police, helped by local policemen, shot the Jews in October 1941. Pits were dug the morning of the shooting by the Jews themselves on a small hill covered by a pine forest, not far from the Jewish cemetery. It seems that there were more than 300 victims. A few days later, the Germans and local policemen shot six Jews at the Jewish cemetery in Shatsk. The shooting was most likely of Jews who had been in hiding during the first shooting. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by Yahad, after the Jewish extermination, their houses were plundered.
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