Document 20 An eyewitness describes a mass shooting in the Soviet Union

This testimony was offered by Rinka Yoselewska at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, May 1961. It provided one of the most graphic and memorable depictions of the Holocaust presented by any of the trial’s 102 witnesses.

On Saturday evening [8 August 1941] gentiles from nearby villages came to our town and said ... that the Germans were killing Jews - we’d better flee, disperse and hide ... We asked grandfather: What shall we do, run away? He consulted with some of his acquaintances, the rabbi, the ritual slaughterer, and other important people, and then said not to run away, to remain where we are, nothing will happen. Perhaps young people will be taken to work, but killing - it can’t be ...

Next morning, at dawn, the town was in an uproar. A Jew came running from the nearby village of Borki ... He shouted: ‘Jews, run away, the Germans are coming to kill us’ ... That very moment we saw the Germans driving into town; they snatched that Jew at once. He barely got into town and was shot on the spot. All the Jews who had heard it began to run away and tried to hide. Grandfather said: ‘You children get away ... [N]othing will happen to me’ ... That day we made our escape, those who could manage, because the Germans had seized the town. We found refuge in a small forest, where we could hear shooting ... The next day at daybreak we heard a lot of shooting ...

When the shooting stopped, we began to make our way back. The gentiles we met told us that we could go ahead; the Germans had left. They killed everyone they found. Nobody was left...

[On 22 August 1941] we saw a lot of German policemen surrounding the ghetto ... We realized that this time it wasn’t a matter of counting us ... A lot of Germans were there. Four or five Germans for every one of our people. This was not in order to count us ... Then we were told: ‘Death is threatening you. You will be shot; whoever wants to buy his way out should bring in whatever he owns in money or jewels that he has hidden’. They tormented us right till the end of the day ... [But] we did not have anything ... We had handed over everything before ...

Then the gate of the ghetto opened and a truck moved in. Those who were strong enough climbed up by themselves, but the weak ones were thrown in. They were piled into the truck like cattle ... The rest they made run after the truck ...

We arrived at the place. Those who had been on the truck had already got down, undressed and stood in a row ... It was about three kilometres away from our town. There was a hill and a little below it they had dug something like a ditch. They made us walk up to the hill, in rows of four, and ... shot each one of us separately ... They were SS men. They carried several guns with plenty of ammunition pouches ...

Some of the younger ones tried to run away. They hardly managed a few steps, they were caught and shot. Then came our turn ...

[My six-year-old daughter and I] stood facing the ditch. I turned my head. He asked, ‘Whom do I shoot first?’ I didn’t answer. He tore the child away from me. I heard her last cry and he shot her. Then he got ready to kill me ... He turned me around, loaded his pistol, so that I could see what he was doing. Then he again turned me around and shot me. I fell down ...

I felt nothing. At that moment I felt that something was weighing me down. I thought that I was dead, but that I could feel something even though I was dead ... I felt I was suffocating, bodies had fallen on me ... I pulled myself up with the last bit of strength. When I reached the top I looked around but I couldn't recognize the place. Corpses strewn all over, there was no end to the bodies ... The Germans were not there. No one was there ...

When he shot me I was wounded in the head. I still have a big scar on my head, where I was wounded by the Germans. I got to my feet to see that horrible scene ...

When I saw they were gone I dragged myself over to the grave and wanted to jump in. I thought the grave would open up and let me fall inside alive. I envied everyone for whom it was already over, while I was still alive ... I... tried to dig my way in with my hands ... The earth didn’t open up. I shouted to Mother and Father, why was I left alive? What did I do to deserve this? Where shall I go? To whom can I turn? I have nobody. I saw everything; I saw everybody killed. No one answered.

(State of Israel, 1993: vol. 1: 514-518)

Document 21 A Sonderkommando member describes the Bełżec killing centre

This testimony by Rudolf Reder, one of only a handful of Jews to escape from the Belzec killing centre, is one of the earliest given by a Jew after the war. It was collected by the Regional Jewish Historical Commission in Krakow in early 1945.

On 16 August 1942 I was taken during an Aktion in Lwow to the Janowska camp. The next day I was loaded onto a railroad car ... The train carried about 5,000 people, [including] women and children ... [in] closed, sealed freight cars with grates on the windows ... The journey lasted seven nightmarish, desperate, hopeless hours. The train arrived at Belzec station ...

The camp was situated in a young coniferous forest, out of which a 3 km square clearing had been cut ... From a distance it was invisible, because the cut trees had been lashed to the growing ones to create a thicket that blocked the light, hiding the barracks and death chambers that were located there ...

After unloading, all were ordered to disrobe, men and women together. We were told that we were going to the baths and then to work. For a while the people were glad to hear talk about work. Dozens of Jews from the Sonderkommando rummaged through the clothing, removed gold and money. The clothing was taken to the warehouse; valuables were sorted and brought to the camp office.

The building in which the gas chambers were located was a single-storey bungalow painted white. A corridor ran down the middle; there were three chambers to the left, three more to the right. The building was made of concrete. There were no windows. The roof, 3.5 metres high, was covered with roofing paper.

Jewish barbers shaved the women’s heads in the yard outside. The women sat naked on stools and were shorn one by one. While waiting they were beaten on the head and face with whips. The people were shoved into the ‘baths’ en masse, with no order, without counting, like cattle to be slaughtered. In the corridor people understood that they were going to die. Whoever balked was prodded with a bayonet by Ukrainian guards ...

The gassing took twenty minutes. The gas was produced by a gasoline engine worked by two Ukrainian machinists. It was located in a room at the end of the corridor. The gas ran through pipes into the chambers ...

The corpses were dragged by leather straps to graves 200-300 paces distant. On the way from the building to the graves, ten dentists, selected from among the prisoners, opened the corpses’ mouths and extracted the teeth; later they melted the gold into ingots, which went to the camp commandant’s office ...

Immediately upon arrival skilled workers were selected - carpenters, metalworkers, cobblers, tailors. I said I was a machine fitter. I was assigned to the machine that dug sand out of the grave pits ...

There were 500 people in the Sonderkommando. Every day the ranks were thinned by 30-40. The Germans culled the workers who were weak, called out their names at noon, made them run to the grave, and shot them. They brought the number back to 500 out of the new transports ...

(Borwicz et al., 1945: 56-58)