Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины

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

division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the direction of

Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar and the station of Krymska

was jammed by nearly two hundred freight boxcars filled to capacity with

political prisoners.

Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German hands the

Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured gasoline on the cars and

let them burn.

Thus a few thousand people perished in inhuman torture merely because they

were suspected of anti-communism.

When the Germans entered Katerynodar they found in the regional divisional

building of the NKVD in Sinny Bazar, a horrible torture chamber. In the vault

of this building there was a dark passage which ended with a wooden platform

which dipped down at a sharp angle. Right underneath it there was a machine

which resembled a straw chopper. It was a disk equipped with a system of big

knives that revolved at great speed. It was powered by a motor.

After questioning, the innocent victims were driven by the NKVD agents

towards the wooden platform and rolled under the knives of the hellish

meatchopper. The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers

and were carried away with a stream of sewage into the river Kuban.

Having discovered this horrible place, the Germans gave permission to all

who wished to view this inhuman device. Thousands of people visited the place,

among them the author of these lines.

Other nations direct their talents towards the discovery of better

medicines, new materials, better means of communication to make living

conditions better. The Russian people are using all their talents for the

production of machines and new methods of mass murder and torture. (P. K., The

infernal device of the Russian Communists (by an eyewitness), in The Black

Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian

Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 123-124)

M. Kowal

BOLSHEVIK MURDERS

I am Michael Kowal, from the town of Kaminka Strumylova in the Lviw Region

in Ukraine. During the communist occupation of Western Ukraine I personally

witnessed three arrests in my native town on June 22, 1941, those of Bohdan

Mulkevich, and Michael Mulkevich who lived on Zamok Street, and Michael

Mulkevich's blacksmith apprentice, presumably from the village of Rymaniw in

the same Region. They were suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime.

After th communist retreat from Kaminska-Strumylova they were found in the

town prison with 33 other victims, murdered in a horribly sadistic manner. All

the corpses were tied together with barbed wire and all bore signs of terrible

beatings. Some had nails driven into their skulls. None of them had been shot

to death. Their bodies, nude and badly mauled, were practically unrecognizable

to their relatives.

Bohdan Mulkevish's wife recognized her husband, but, trying to verify her

identification by his gold teeth, found them missing. All the bodies were

taken away fro interment.

That Same day 19 other bodies were discovered near the village of Todan

about 9 or 10 kilometers from Kaminka-Strumylova. They were tied to trees and

their chests were pierced with bayonets. These were all identified by

relatives and taken away for burial. (M. Kowal, Bolshevik Murders, in The

Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of

Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)

Andriy Vodopyan

A RAVINE FILLED WITH THE BODIES OF CHILDREN

I was serving in the Soviet Russian Army. Our artillery unit was

retreating before the Germans in the direction of Yeletsk. On September 18,

1941, our unit came to a wide ravine situated about 14 miles from Chartsysk

station, and about 60 miles from the city of Staline. The ravine stretched

from the station of Chartsysk to the station of Snizhy. When we approached the

ravine we were taken aback by a horrible sight. The whole ravine was filled

with the bodies of children. They were lying in different positions. Most of

them were from 14 to 16 years of age. They were dressed in black, and we

recognized them as students of the F.S.U., a well-known trade and craft

school. We counted 370 bodies altogether. All of them had been killed by

machine gun fire.

This group of children was being evacuated from Staline when the Germans

neared the city. The children had marched 60 miles, and, exhausted and unable

to continue walking, asked for transportation. The officers in charge promised

to send them trucks. Instead of trucks, a detachment of the Russian political

police (NKVD) arrived, and shot the children in cold blood with machine guns.

This ravine, filled with hundreds of bodies of slain children, moved even the

soldiers, accustomed as they were to the sight of death. (Andriy Vodopyan, A

Ravine Filled With the Bodies of Children, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black

Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian

Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)

Rev. J. Chyrva was imprisoned in 1941 when the Russian Communist armies were

withdrawing from the city of Riwne. He happened to be cast into one of those

jails in which the communists, fleeing from advancing German armies, attempted

to rid themselves of as many prisoners as possible by throwing hand-grenades

into the crowded cells. When the first grenade was thrown into the cell where

Rev. J. Chyrva was kept, he was the first to fall - his foot shattered. On him

fell many mutilated bodies, covering him, thus saving his life. Later, when

people came into the cell, they found all the prisoners dead with the exception

of Rev. J. Chyrva. He is alive today, a witness of that horrible

manslaughter. (Rev. Lev Buchak, Persecution of Ukrainian Protestants under the

Soviet Rule, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White

Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto,

1953, p. 529)

The Bolsheviks had arrested thousands of Ukrainian patriots, and prior to their

retreat, they killed them savagely. For some reason even highly regarded

Jewish authors understate the number of Ukrainian victims of Bolshevik terror.

Gerald Reitlinger gives a figure of three to four thousand in Lviv alone.

Hilberg speaks of "the Bolsheviks deporting Ukrainians," but he does not

furnish any overall figures. But on the basis of a German document (RSHA

IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR no. 28, 20 July 1941, No-2943), which I was

unable to verify, he recounts one particularly horrible episode:

In Kremenets 100-150 Ukrainians had been killed by the Soviets.

When some of the exhumed corpses were found without skin, rumors

circulated that the Ukrainians had been thrown into kettles of

boiling water. The Ukrainian population retaliated by seizing

130 Jews and beating them to death with clubs.

He also quotes the French collaborator Dr. Frederic as saying that the

Bolsheviks killed eighteen thousand Ukrainian political prisoners in Lviv and

its outskirts alone.

Basing his remarks on an anonymous article entitled "The Ethnocide of

Ukrainians in the USSR," in the dissident journal Ukrainian Herald, Issue 7-8,