A mother, a child, a death pit. German and Ukrainian (collaborator) soldiers following the order by Heinrich Himmler. October,13, 1941, Ukraine Miropol/Myropil

A mother, a child, a death pit. German and Ukrainian (collaborator) soldiers following the order by Heinrich Himmler. October,13, 1941, Ukraine Miropol/Myropil 

the young girl, slender and dark, who, passing near me, pointed at herself, saying, "twenty-­three." I walked around the mound and faced a frightful common grave. Tightly packed corpses were heaped so close together that only the heads showed. Most were wounded in the head and the blood flowed over their shoulders. Some still moved. Others raised their hands and turned their heads to show that they were still alive. The ditch was two-­thirds full. I estimate that it held a thousand bodies. 

Here in Berlin and more and more across Germany, we have so called "Stolpersteine".

These are solid metail stones, which are embedded in the street, where a former German jew or family lived, who was killed during the holocaust. I think - but did not yet "google" for it - that there is even an overview of all "Stolpersteine" across Germany and the details of the respective families or people who were murdered.

When you casually stroll through Berlin, you again and again encounter these "Stolpersteine". It shows, that these were not some distant people who were killed off. But rather neighbors.

Some were for sure reported by "fellow Germans" for being a jew. Others were taken away and all neighbors were simply too afraid to do something.

Like the eye-witness report I read some time ago about a lady who watched how armed men took away their jewish neighbors. A family of 4. Mother, father and two kids. One of them being a toddler.

The family was not surprisingly agitated and the toddler crying and one of the armed men, while shouting commands for them to get in the car or van, took the toddler away from the crying mother and slammed it into the wall of the car/van until it stopped crying. Then he gave the corpse back to the mother and all were loaded into the van and vanished (in one of the concentration camps for sure).

The same men would go home the same evening and kiss their kids goodnight.

It is hard to process. But it has happend way too often in history. It has happened during the last century and it is happening today. We need to remember history, teach it well and make sure that something like this never happens again.

You can see one collaborator is smiling. These guys volunteered and were happy to carry out the murders. There was no forcing to be done. They were not held at gun point or were drafted. The German officers too are also not innocent.

This is how my grandfather’s side of the family was killed. On May 29, 1942, the Jews in their village in Belarus were marched out of the Ghetto to the local cemetery and executed.

Witness Interview Yulya P.: "The Jews had to go down into the pit. They had to stand in a line, before being fired on all at once with a machine gun and falling into the pit. The Jews were clubbed on the head, adults had their hands tied behind their backs and the children cried. They had to lie down on the previous “layer” of Jewish bodies which had been arranged. If they were next to the pit, policemen pushed them in with their feet. The policemen were scum. They betrayed and shot their own friends." (Eyewitness N°27, interviewed in Dokshitsy, on March 27th 2008)

Soviet archives "All 3,000 or 3,500 Jews had been kept in the Dokshitsy ghetto. They were taken out of the ghetto in groups of 100-150. They were, for the most part, women with children, old people and young people. They were taken to a pit near the Jewish cemetery of Dokshitsy, where they were forced to undress and shot. This mass extermination lasted three weeks and all Jews from the ghetto were shot." [Act drawn up by the Soviet extraordinary commission; RG-

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