The methodical extermination of the entire Jewish population of the city of Krasnotav, in the Ukraine, by German occupation troops is reported today by the Soviet press in a dispatch from a front correspondent based on effadavits given him by four non-Jewish eye-witnesses of the massacres.
Immediately after the Germans seized Krasnotav in August, 1941, 47 Jewish men were taken to the woods on the pretext that they were to be used for forced labor. When they reached a spot near the village of Senigov, however, they were all shot. A week later a German punitive detachment came to Krasnotav, rounded up several hundred men, women and children and loaded them into trucks which took them to the woods near the village of Guta. There two large pits were already waiting, and 735 Jews were machine gunned and dumped into the mass graves. Many persons who were wounded, but still alive, were buried there. The property of the massacred Jews was looted by the German soldiers.
From time to time during the subsequent six months Nazi detachments raided the village to massacre any remaining Jews who had found shelter in the homes of non Jewish friends. In March, 1942, these raids were climaxed by the visit of the regional commandant of the German police, under whose supervision 175 Jews were captured and tortured. Survivors were driven half-naked to a camp at Berezov, from where they were taken a short time afterwards to the notorious Slavuta Camp, where thousands of Russian war prisoners had been tortured to death. None of the Jews ever left Slavuta. Eventually, all of them were shot and their bodies buried near a water tower in the village of Slavuta proper.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
