[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 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)
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 manner and had their breats cut off.
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, Innocent Victims, in The Black Deeds
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
