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Transcript of the
Interrogation of the Witness Prokhorchuk, V.M.
May 30, 1944 in the village of Antoniny.
On this date the Prosecutor of the Antoniny District F.M.
Oleshko interrogated as a witness [the following person]:
Prokhorchuk, Vasily Makarovich, born in 1911,
Ukrainian, married, with a 4th-grade education, a
bookkeeper by trade, and born in the village of Antoniny
of the Antoniny District in the Kamenetz-Podolsk Region.
After he was given the warning according to the Article 89
of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic, Prokhorchuk testified to the following:
German troops occupied the Antoniny District on July 7,
1941. During the first dates of October 1941, 4 Germans
arrived to Antoniny; their names and positions were: 1)
Harold Sherer –Gebietscommissar, 2) Fridrich Gerhard –
Deputy Gebietscommissar, 3) Verner Pankov–Financial
Inspector, 4) Trosin (I do not remember his initials) - "a
special person" Commissar’s (Special?) Secretary. At that
time the Gebiet included 3 districts: Antoniny, Krasilov
and Bazaliya, with the Gebiet center in the village of
Antoniny. In late October 1941, another 3 Germans arrived,
who immediately organized a gendarmerie. It was headed by
a German [by the last name of] Paul; who the other two
were - one by the name of Turner, and I do not know the
last name of the second one - and what their official
positions were, I do not know. At the same time, 2 more
Germans arrived to the sugar factory in the village of
Kremenchuki; they were in charge of the agricultural
production in the Gebiet; they were Ginihs and Gaben, I do
not know their first names and where they came from. After
the arrival of the Germans above, around February or March
of 1942, there came many more Germans to the Antoniny
District, the following of whom I know by their last names
and positions:
1.Tsvaygert –the Head of the Agricultural
Department, and his subordinates:
2. Peyts, Vinkler, Klug, Gaben, Postler, Peyzel,
Garbatser, Miler, Shittse, Leyman and others, whose first
names like those of the persons above and of those I have
not mentioned, I did not know then and I do not know now.
In addition, in the villages of the Antoniny Gebiet, there
were organized strong points [stützpunkt] per every 6-7
villages, where 2-3 Germans sat in each one; in each
district center as well there sat 2-3 Germans, who were
administrators of the Agricultural Department
[kreislandwirt] and who were in charge of agriculture
absolutely and entirely. At the end of 1941, as well as in
early 1942, the above-mentioned persons committed acts of
repression towards the population of the occupied areas of
the Antoniny Gebiet in terms of [seizing] the 1941 harvest
threshing and sending it to Germany. Ever since the German
invaders took power in the Antoniny Gebiet, there began
arrests of members of the [Communist] Party and Soviet
activists, many of whom were sent to [the city of]
Starokonstantinov—to SD [Security Services] as well as to
I do not know where. In addition, all office employees,
workers, and other persons who committed acts of sabotage,
did not want to work, and variously harmed Germans through
espionage were identified and sent to Germany, as well as
to prisons and camps, one of which was organized in the
village of Manevtsy, in the Krasilov District. The camp
was meant for...(?). During the occupation, under the
Germans, they began to rob and brutally beat all the Jews
living in the Antoniny Gebiet and take away their
valuables, clothing, and furniture. In the camps, the Jews
were forced to work 12-14 hours, were fed poorly, and were
forced to pull two-horse carts full of sand, earth, or
stone by themselves—over grass and via the road from
Antoniny to Orlintsy. In addition, when leaving the camp
and coming back to it, every Jewish person got beaten with
a stick or a rubber [club] on the shoulders or the head,
wherever the Ukrainian policemen could get them. The camp
was located in the village of Orlintsy, in the Antoniny
District, and in that camp there were Jews from the
village of Kulchiny of the Krasilov District, as well as
partly from Krasilov [itself]—there were up to 300 Jews
there. Not only able-bodied Jews were driven to the camp;
there also were 12-14 year-old children and 70-80 year-old
men. In addition, in each District—in Krasilov, Basaliya
et al., there were camps organized ([apparently the
reference is to ghettos—E. Sh.]): a few houses were set
aside, and the territory around them was fenced off with
barbed wire. In these camps there were children and sick
elderly people, whom the Germans considered no better than
cattle. There was not even any medical supervision for the
Jews in spite of the very rampant typhoid and dysentery at
the time, so in many cases, sick children and the elderly
among the Jewish population were simply killed.
In the month of July of the year 1942, all the Jews from
the territory of Antoniny Gebiet, both able-bodied and
disabled, as well as the elderly and the children, were
herded into one place near the village of Manevtsy of the
Krasilov District, where they were shot to death. From the
stories by local witnesses of the execution, there were
cases when children were thrown alive into the pit-grave.
The grave was so crowded and poorly covered with earth
that human blood seeped up to the surface of the soil,
after which it took Germans two weeks to carry lime from
the Antoniny sugar refinery to cover the grave.
Thousands of people from the area were sent to work to
Germany as [very hard, slave] labor during the period of
the German occupation of the territory of the Antoniny,
Krasilov and Bazaliya Districts. The gendarmerie caught
and sent away as prisoners those people who did not want
to go to Germany, and [as punishment] cattle, bread and
other things were taken away from their relatives. All
this work was directed by a German, Yatsorik, who each
time people were sent to Germany beat many of them with a
stick - drawing blood in some particular cases. I know the
following people from among former members of the
[Communist] Party and Soviet activists, who, during the
1941-42-43-44, were taken by the gendarmerie and sent to
the SD [Special Services]:
- Volutsky, Viktor
- Vershinin, Petro.
German authorities issued necessary for survival rations
to the public at the rate of 7 kg of grain per person per
month. That was the rate for farmers, while workers and
office employees were issued 7 kg for the principle worker
and 5 kg for each dependent per month; moreover, they
issued exclusively barley or buckwheat, and if anyone
managed to get rye or wheat bread or grain, the Germans
carried out a complete investigation: where he got it,
where he could have taken it from, and so on. And if they
discovered that he took it from the kolkhoz, he was
seriously punished: fined, sent to a labor camp, or
subjugated to the severest physical punishment. During the
German occupation of the territory of the Antoniny Gebiet,
they imposed taxes; for example, for one dog one had to
pay 150 rubles, for a cat—10 rubles, for one able-bodied
person—100 rubles a year, besides insurance. All of these
tricks were pulled off by the order of the
Gebietscommissar. Through his subordinate administrators
of the Agricultural Department [kreislandwirt] and
employees of strong points [stützpunkt], they were
legalized and enforced. Responsible for carrying out all
the above activities were the Gebietscommissar and his
assistants, such as: Pankov, Trosin, Fridrich, Tsvaygert,
Vinkler, Yatsorik, Kreler, Paul, and Shefer, with the
exception of the 4 persons mentioned above.Where they came
from, I do not know.
This transcript was written by my own hand, to which I
testify by signing my name
/ Prokhorchuk /.
The Prosecutor of the Antoniny District of the
Kamenetz-Podolsk Region
/ Oleshko /
The source: the Khmelnitsky State Archives. R-863,
Inventory №2, Folders №30, 38, 39, 44, and 46; the
archival work was performed by Nikolai Pekarsky.
Translated from the original Russian by Veronica
Muskheli
Additional editing by B. Chernick and E. Sheinman
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