Family Stories and Memoirs

Letter of the Holocaust in Emilchino of December 29, 2007

Arkadij ZAKS, born in Emilchino in June1936 , now residing in Nurnberg (Germany).

Letter on the Holocaust victims in Emilchino dated December 29,2007

“I was born in the settlement of Emilchino in 1936. Our family: me, my mother, father and sisters lived till une 1941 in the city of Zhitomir. Every summer we came to Emilchino to our grandmother REZNIK Basya daughter of Mordukh, to have a rest. Her house was located on the place, where in 1950 the building of the district road committee was erected.

The place shaded on the sketch was until August 1941 densely built up by the houses and homesteads where lived,primarily, the Jews. In August 1941 when the Red Army was retreating one of our countrymen ( a Jew) set them on fire order prevent the Germans to get them.

All this I heard not once from my grandmother who always condemned him and, probably, cursed him inwardly.

When we came from evacuation in October 1944, the location of our house and dozens meters around there was an enormous wasteland overgrown with grass on the ashes. It stretched till the building of the district prosecutor’s office and the house where lived my uncle ZAKS Shimel and in the Kuleshovskaya Street till the building where the editorial office of the local newspaper housed.  When we returned there were rumors that the fascists buried in one mass grave a lot of Jews on the location of our former house.

In May 1945 or 1946 I was a witness of  excavations of this grave  by the Jewish community of Emilchino. The grave was some 4-5 metres in diameter. There were some 10-15 corpses. I cannot say it for sure as I was only 9 years old and it happened 62 years ago. My grandmother identified  her girl- friend  by the remains of the extant dress. Other residents of Emilchino also identified their relatives and friends by remains of clothes and other signs, The remains of the bodies (I think) on the Jewish cemetery and buried them there. Till 1950 there were kitchen gardens of the local people and ours as well.

House of ZAKS Shimel -my grandfather District prosecutor's office (top line);

(shaded area) the district road mass grave (marked in red) , a well

under them - the Kulishovsksya street ( former the 1st of May street)

The editorial office of the local newspaper (I remember it was called - "Narodnya Tribuna"- (the people's tribune)

From the right - the house of the district consumer's union ,located in the park

in perpendicular -Roza Luxemburg Street