The Holocaust - An eyewitness

During the early stages of the Final Solution the Jews in the territories captured by the Germans were simply lined up in front of huge pits and shot in the back of the head by special execution squads of fanatical Nazis. One German engineer gave this account of such an occasion in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union):

'Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited for a sign from another SS man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the 15 minutes that I stood near the pit I heard no complaint or plea for mercy.

'An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about ten years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him.

'I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave ... Nearly all the people had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people were still moving. The pit was already two-thirds full. I estimated that it contained about a thousand people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an SS man ... his feet dangling in the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.

'The people, completely naked, went down some steps and clambered over the heads of the people lying there to the place to which the SS man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or wounded people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or ... already motionless on top of the bodies that lay beneath them. Blood was running from their necks.'

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 69