ГУЛаг Палестины

assumed that in the last days before the retreat of the Russians, about 100

influential Ukrainians were murdered [in Pleskau]. So far the bodies have not

been found - a search has been initiated.

About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in Kremenets. Some

of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown into cauldrons of boiling

water. This has been deduced from the fact that the bodies were found without

skin when they were exhumed. ...

... Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in Lvov,

committed extensive mass-murder.

... Before their flight [from Tarnopol], as in Lvov and Dubno, the

Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments revealed 10 bodies of German

soldiers. Almost all of them had their hands tied behind their backs with

wire. The bodies revealed traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged

eyes, severed tongues and limbs.

The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians, among them

women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and Poles were spared by the

Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the total number of [Tarnopol] victims since

the occupation of the Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The pla

deportation of the Ukrainians already started in 1939. There is hardly a

family in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not disappeared.

... The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is destroyed. Since the begi

the war, 160 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or

deported. Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000

civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the morning of July 1,

1941.

As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of the Court of

Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also used here (as in Lemberg

[Lviv]) for torture, as several bodies were found, totally naked, their skin

burst and torn in many places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire

and set above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found

underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but saved his

life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his face, reports that one

could also hear screams of pain from women and girls. (Operational Situation

Report USSR No. 28, July 20, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and

Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of

the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,

Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p.38-40)

F. Fedorenko

MY TESTIMONY

When the bolsheviks retreated before the German onslaught in the Second

World War they took care in advance not to leave any prisoners behind when the

Germans arrived.

The prisoners were driven, en masse, under heavy NKVD guard deep into

Russia or Siberia, day and night. Many of them were so tired that they could

go no further. These were shot without compunction where they fell. Terrible

things happened then. Sometimes, wives recognized their husbands among the

evacuees, as the prisoners were being driven through the villages. There was

great despair when they saw their loved ones taken under the muzzles of

automatic guns, to far, unknown places.

The villagers took care of those who did not die at once from the NKVD

bullets, but this was a very dangerous thing to do before all the bolsheviks

cleared out.

But the NKVD could not evacuate all the prisoners, there were so many arrests,

and jails were replenished constantly. In such a case the NKVD, before making

a hasty retreat, would murder the prisoners in their cells.

I recall that when the Germans came, in the fall of 1941, to a little town,

Chornobil, on the Prypyat River, 62 miles west of Kiev, 52 corpses of recently

murdered people, slightly covered with earth, were found in the prison yeard.

These corpses had their hands tied at the back with wire; some had their backs

flayed, others had gouged eyes or nails driven into their heels; still others

had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away. Instruments of

torture which the communists used were found in the dungeon of the prison.

Many of the tortured people were identified because they were mostly farmers

from the local collectives who had been arrested by the NKVD for some unknown

reason.

For instance, one girl (whose name I ca

Zallissya, a mile and a quarter from Chornobil, was arrested because one day

she failed to go to dig trenches. All were compelled at that time, to dig

anti-tank trenches. The girl was sick but there was no doctor to examine her

and the NKVD arrested her, never to return.

Two days later, when the Germans arrived, she was found among the fifty-two

corpses. (F. Fedorenko, My Testimony, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A

White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror,

Toronto, 1953, pp. 97-98)

Andriy Vodopyan

CRIME IN STALINE

In this ciy in the NKVD prison factory the communists executed 180 persons

and buried them in two holes dug in the prison yard. The corpses were

liberally treated with unslaked lime, especially the faces.

My brother was sentenced to three months in jail for coming late to work.

After serving 18 days in the factory prison he was set free, and a month later

was drafted to the Red Army because this was in July 1941.

Later, his wife and my mother found him among the corpses, identifying him by

the left hand finger, underwear and papers he had on him.

This atrocity came to light when prisoners who remained alive were liberated.

They had also a very close call. Six days before the arrival of the German

troops they heard muffled shots.

The prison was secretly mined by NKVD agents in preparation for the German

invaders. (Andriy Vodopyan, Crime in Staline, in The Black Deeds of the

Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist

Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 121)

Yuriy Dniprovy

INNOCENT VICTIMS

In the little town of Zolotnyky in the Ternopil region the bolsheviks

murdered a captain of the former Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) of 1918-1922,

Mr. Dankiw, and clerks of the Ukrainian cooperative store, the sisters

Magdalene, Sophia and Clementine Husar from the suburb of Vaha. Clementine and

Magdalene were tortured in a beastly ma

Other people executed at that time were: Slavko Demyd, Yosyp Vozny, Vasyl

Burbela, Zynoviy Kushniryna, Pavlo Kushniryna and a non-commissioned officer of

the UHA, Mr. Tsiholsky. (Yuriy Dniprovy, I

of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian

Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 122)

P. K.

THE INFERNAL DEVICE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS

(By an eyewitness) In the year 1942, when the Red Army, harassed by the

German divisions, retreated from Katerynodar (Krasnodar), the regional NKVD

division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the direction of

Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar and the station of Krymska

was jammed by nearly two hundred freight boxcars filled to capacity with

political prisoners.

Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German hands the

Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured gasoline on the cars and