In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets

by Patrick Desbois

‘Once our trucks were full of Jews, we still didn’t know where we were supposed to go. On each of our truck steps was an SS guard with a loaded submachine gun ready to fire. We started to drive once the three trucks from the Stickel, Charlottenburg Company were full. We went down Judenstraße, to Lembergstraße, then we turned right down Lublinerstraße. After two kilometers [a mile], we turned off to the left, behind a small forest, and took a dirt road. We kept going until we got to an old Russian anti-tank ravine. At the edge of the ditch was a large number of SS with submachine guns, and here and there we could see actual machine guns. The Jews had to get out, and were immediately surrounded. The Jews wearing good quality clothes were forced to take them off. Then, they were ordered down into the ditch in groups of ten to fifteen people, with no difference made between the young and the old or between men, women, and children. Once the first of them were in the ditch, the SS started to shoot. Already on the trip, the Jews who had tried to resist had been immediately executed. People were trembling, many on their knees praying. The SS were pitiless and pushed them into the ditch. Then we came back here. We won’t go back.’”