3 Execution site(s)
Maria H., born in 1929:
“Y. U.: And what happened to the Jews when the Germans came?
Witness: They ran away.
Y. U.: All of them?
Witness: They ran wherever they could, I don’t know where… To other villages. I guess.
Y. U.: Did the Germans try to find them?
Witness: Of course they looked for them. They caught them somewhere and took them over to the club building. They brought Jews once, then a second time. Then they were driven to work to build a road. The Jews built that road to Peremyshlyany.
Y. U.: And what kind of a club building was it?
Witness: We would go there to sing and perform, or to watch movies.
Y. U.: Did it exist before the Germans came?
Witness: It did. And then they took the Jews there and from there they would arrange them three in a row, a lot of them, and would drive them to work. And they were shouting at them: “Sing along!”
Y. U. : And what were they singing?
Witness: How can I know? They were doing they “vay-vay-vay” or something like that. Us, the village kids, we would say to each other: “Let’s go and watch the Jews sing.” And we would go, but the Germans were standing around and they would chase us away. Then the Jews would be driven to a lunch break. And when someone tried to run away, he was hanged on a tree branch.
Y. U.: Where was he hanged?
Witness By the club building.
Y. U.: Did you see the Jew being hanged?
Witness: It happened to a lot of them. We would say: “There’s a little Jew hanging again.”
Y. U.: Was there anyone you knew personally among the Jews?
Witness: No, I didn’t know any of them. I was not allowed to get close, he chased us away, it was horrible. He led the Jews down the street, there were a lot of them, and we, the children, we would line the street, and he would chase us away. He led them to the shed or a basement where that Jew used to live, he would put them all there, lock them up and leave.
Y. U.: So, did he lock them in the club or in another building?
Witness: In another building, where the Jew used to live. He took them all to that shed.” (Witness n°3023U, interviewed in Kurovychi, on December 8, 2021)
"On March 21, 1943, the German authorities created a labor camp in Peremyshliany. It was an annex of the labor camp located in Kurovytchi (north of Peremyshliany). The Jewish prisoners worked in a quarry and in road construction. Liquidation of the labor camp: June 28, 1943. On this occasion, 250 women were shot and 200 men transferred to the Kurovytchi camp.” [Source: A. Kruglov, The Holocaust on the territory of the USSR, Dnipro, 2017].
Kurovychi is a village in the Zolochiv district, Lviv Region, Ukraine. The village is located on the Lviv-Ternopil highway, 39 km from Zolochiv and 30 km from Lviv. At the beginning of the 20th century, the village was under Austrian rule, and between 1919 and 1939 under Polish rule. Count Potocki had a residence there. In 1939, it was annexed by the Soviets.Before the war, there were dozens of Jewish families in the village. They lived in the center, Zelena Street, Poshtova etc. They were tradespeople. Shemko owned a slaughterhouse and Froim had a fabric store. There was also a dairy and a store where you could buy gas.
In the summer of 1941, Kurovichi was occupied by Wehrmacht units. In September 1941, a Jewish labor camp was established there in the buildings of the former estate of Count Potocki. The labor camp was surrounded by barbed wire. The Jews had to work on the construction of the road. This work was supervised by the Todt organization. All of the witnesses interviewed by the team claim to have seen Jews being hanged in the camp. Pavlo (witness n°3020) showed the team one of the shooting and burial sites for Jews. He saw with his own eyes the bodies of four or five Jews near the grave, which was in a vegetable garden not far from his house. It is possible that there were more victims shot at this location. Sidona (witness n°3021) saw a German shoot Jews in a pit near the camp. The witness saw 8-10 Jews shot, but according to her, the pit remained open for some time, so there were probably more shootings. Witnesses Antonina (witness 3022) and Maria (witness 3023) told the team about a third execution site, which was also in a private vegetable garden. Maria saw this execution with her own eyes and said that about 15 Jews were shot there.
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