Чтение онлайн

in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not

disappeared. [...] The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is

destroyed. Since the beginning of 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)

(14) Had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away.

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 yard.

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 cannot recall now) from

the village of 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)

(15) Executed 180 persons.

Andriy Vodopyan

CRIME IN STALINE

In this city 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)

(16) Had their breasts cut off.

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 manner and had their breasts cut off.