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1 Execution site(s)
Nina G., born in 1931, remembered the day when she went to look at the pit: « The pit was in the field. We went there afterwards, when it had already been covered. We could see the soil moving. The Germans brought them in trucks, made them get down in the pit and buried them alive. There were entire families.” (Witness n°485, interviewed in Atyaevka, on May 15, 2015)
« In May 1942 the German authorities imprisoned a big group of Gypsies from the kolkhozes of the Kromy district as well as Jews who didn’t have time to evacuate and prisoners of war. On July 08, 1942, on an order of the Gestapo officers, all civilians and prisoners of war were brutally massacred and brought in covered trucks during the day in order to be buried near the nursery in the village of Vakovo [Note: Vozhovo), 3km away from Kromy…[ ] We discovered two mass graves. [RG 22.016M, Fond 201, opis, 386, delo 79, page 48]
Vozhovo is situated about 41 km southwest of Oryol. Prior to the war, there were no Jews living in Vozhovo. From the archives and research, we know that some Jews lived in Kromy but we don’t have any detailed information. The village was occupied by the Germans in August 1941.
According to the Soviet archives and Yahad’s field research, 147 people, mostly Jews and Gypsies from Kromy, were massacred and buried in Vozhovo. Apparently, according to witness n°485, the Roma victims were brought and pushed alive into the pit. There were two mass graves, 49 bodies in one, mostly women and children, and 98 bodies of every sex and age in the other. In 1943, the Soviet commission exhumed the bodies and reburied them not far from that place where their bodies had been found. Today this place remains without a monument.
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