1 Execution site(s)
Maria B., born in 1927: “YIU: Were there other nationalities in the village alongside the Ukrainians?
W: There were Jews as well, but they didn’t talk much to us. They were stayed away from us. I only knew one Jewish person because I was just a child at the time.
YIU: What did this Jewish person do?
W: I don’t know, but they didn’t work. They were Jewish. They had their own business. There were different people in their group, some were unpleasant, but others were kind. Every nation has a mix of people.” (Witness n°2710U, interviewed in Bahva, on November 5, 2019)
Bahva is a village located 140km (87mi) southwest of Cherkassy. The first records of the Jewish community in Bahva go back to the late 18th century. The community was small. The majority of Jews lived in the center, while the Ukrainian population lived on the outskirts of the town. The Jews were involved in small scale trade and manufacture.
Bahva was occupied by the Germans at the end of July 1941. Some of local Jews managed to flee before the Germans’ arrival. The extermination of the Jewish population started shortly after the occupation. In the late summer or early fall 1941, about 140 Jews, men, women, and children among them, were rounded up and taken to the ravine outside the village where they were murdered. One year later, in 1942, the remaining Jews from the village of Bahva, Teterivka and Sorokotiahuy who had remained in hiding were hunted down by policemen and taken to Zhashkiv, where they were murdered along with the remaining local Jews in a pit located 900m away from the Teterivka-Sorokotiaguy road. According to historical sources, a total of 300 Jews were shot there.
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