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This eyewitness testimony is by Rivka Yosselevscka in a war crimes tribunal court. She lived in Zagrodski when the Einsatzgruppen arrived in the summer of 1942. All Jews were rounded up, a roster was drawn up and the families were loaded onto trucks. Since there were approximately 500 families, many could not get on the trucks and were ordered to run behind them...

"...I had my daughter in my arms and ran after the truck. There were mothers who had 2 or 3 children and held them in their arms - running after the truck. We ran all the way. There were those who fell - we were not allowed to help them rise. They were shot right there, wherever they fell. When we reached the destination, the people from the truck were already down and undressed - all lined up. All of my family was there. This was some 3-km from our village. There was a kind of hillock. At the foot of this little hill, there was a dugout. We were ordered to stand at the top of the hillock and the 4 devils shot us - each one separately. They were SS men - the 4 of them....

When I came to the place, we saw people naked lined up. But we were still hoping that this was only torture. Maybe there is hope - hope of living. One could not leave the line, but I wished to see. Is there anyone down below? I turned my head and saw that some 3 or 4 rows were already killed - on the ground. There were some 12 people amongst the dead. I also want to mention that my child said while we were lined up in the ghetto, she said, "Mother, why did you make me wear the Shabbat dress? We are being taken to be shot!". And when we stood near the dugout, near the grave, she said, "Mother, why are we waiting? Let's run!" Some of the young people tried to run, but they were caught immediately, and they were shot right there. It was difficult to hold on to the children. We took all children not ours, and we carried - we were anxious to get it all over - the suffering of the children was difficult.

We all trudged along to come nearer to the place and to come nearer to the end of the torture of the children. The children were taking leave of their parents, and parents of their elder people. We were driven...we were already undressed, the clothes were removed; and taken away. Our father did not want to undress. He remained in his underwear. We were driven up to the grave...when it came our turn, our father was beaten. We prayed, we begged with my father to undress, but he would not undress, he wanted to keep his underclothes. He did not want to stand naked. Then they tore the clothing off the old man and he was shot. I saw it with my own eyes. Then they took my mother and shot her, too...and then there was my grandmother, my father's mother, standing there, she was eighty years old and she had two children in her arms; and then there was my father's sister. She also had children in her arms and she was shot on the spot with the babies in her arms..

Finally my turn came. There was my younger sister - and she wanted to leave. She prayed with the Germans, she asked to run - naked, she went up to the Germans with one of her friends, they were embracing each other. He looked into her eyes and shot the 2 of them. They fell together in their embrace, the two young girls - my sister and her young friend. Then my 2nd sister was shot and then my turn did come. We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked, "Whom shall I shoot 1st?" We were already facing the grave. The Germans asked, "Who do you want me to shot 1st?"

I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot immediately. And then he aimed at me. First, he held onto my hair and turned my head around. I stayed standing. I heard a shot, but I continued to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around and shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies- but I felt nothing. The moment I did feel, I felt a sort of heaviness...and then I thought "maybe I'm not alive anymore - but I feel something after I've died".

I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling that comes after death. Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move, and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about. I felt that I was choking, strangling, but I tried to save myself - to find some air to breathe, and then I felt that I was climbing towards the top of the grave above the bodies. I rose and I felt bodies pulling at me with their hands, biting at my legs, pulling me down, down. And yet, with my last strength, I came up on top of the grave, and when I did, I did not know the place, so many dead bodies were lying all over, dead people; I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies, but I could not. It was impossible.

They were lying, all dying; suffering; not all of them dead, but in their last sufferings; naked; shot, but not dead. Children crying "Mother" & "Father"; I could not stand on my feet....the Germans were gone. There was nobody there. No one standing up. I was naked, covered with blood, dirty from the other bodies - with the excrement from other bodies which was poured on me....I was wounded in the head...I have a scar to this day from the shot by the Germans...and yet somehow, I did come out of the grave. This was something I thought I would never live to recount. I was searching among the dead for my little girl and I cried for her - Merkele was her name - "Merkele!"

There were children crying "Mother!", "Father!" - but they were smeared with blood and one could not recognize the children. I cried for my daughter. From afar, I saw 2 women standing - I went up to them. They did not know me. I didn't know them, and then I said who I was, then they said, "So you survived!"...and there was another woman crying, "Pull me out from amongst the corpses! I am alive! Help!" We were thinking how we could escape from the place. The cries of the woman, "Help! Pull me out of the corpses!" We pulled her out. Her name was Mikla Rosenberg.

We removed the corpses and the dying people who held onto her and continued to bite. She asked us to take her out, to free her, but we didn't have the strength - and thus we were there all night, fighting for our lives, listening to the cries and screams - then all of a sudden, we saw Germans, mounted Germans - we did not notice them coming in because of the screams and the shouting from the bodies around us. The Germans ordered that all the corpses be heaped together into one big heap and with shovels they were heaped together, all of the corpses, amongst them many still alive.- children running about the place.

I saw them. I saw the children. They were running after me, hanging onto me. Then I sat down in the field and remained sitting with the children around me - the children who got up from the heap of corpses. Then Germans came and were going around the place. We were ordered to collect all the children, but they did not approach me and I sat there watching how they collected the children. They gave a few shots and the children were dead - they did not need many shots - the children were almost dead, and this Rosenberg woman pleaded with the Germans to be spared, but they shot her.

They all left - the Germans and the non-Jews from around the place. They removed the machine guns and they took the trucks. I saw that they all left, and the four of us - we went onto the grave - praying to fall into the grave -even alive, envying those who were dead already and thinking "What to do now?". I was praying for death to come, I was praying for the grave to open up and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting from the grave in many places - like a well of water. When I pass a spring now - I remember the blood which spurted from the ground - from the grave. I was digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open - I did not have enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father "Why did they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to!". I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?...I remained there, stretched out on the grave, 3 days and 3 nights..." (datasync.com)
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