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1 Execution site(s)
Anna I., born in 1924. Her parents died during the Great Famine and she became an orphan. During the Romanian occupation, she was forced to work in the kolkhoz, alongside the Jews: "There were 200 people, men, women, children, everyone was working in the field during the harvest. We had a lunch break, but they didn’t. In the evening, I went back to the hall and I saw 2 Romanians ,who slept in the room nearby, bringing in Jewish girls to rape over the course of a week. Then, one Sunday, all the Jews were gathered on Kriva Street, nowadays it’s Shevchenko Street. I don’t remember exactly which month it was, but it was in late August or early September. By that time the rumors about the shooting of Jews had already spread around the village. I ran to the village center where I saw a crowd of Jews accompanied by Germans and Romanians. They had dogs.
YIU: What color uniform were they wearing?
W: The Germans were wearing grey uniforms and the Romanians were in brown ones. The Germans walked at the head and the back of the column and the Romanians on both sides. How the Jews screamed and cried! It was unbearable. There were entire families, women, elderly people and many children of different ages. If someone from the crowd fell down, the others helped them to stand up. They were constantly beaten by the guards in order to move them on more quickly." (Witness n°2074, interviewed in Ananyiv, on May 30, 2016)
“On August 25, 1941, under the pretext of a gathering, the entire Jewish population was assembled in the town of Ananyev. During the first gathering, at least 600 people were present. They were all put in rows and led down the central street of Ananyev towards to the distillery, in the direction of the railway station of Zherebkovo. 3-4 km away from Ananyev, on the right side of the road, the Jews were lined up along the side of an anti-tank ditch which spread from the village of Novogeorgiyevka. Once they were lined up, someone fired at them with machine guns. We could hear the bursts of fire and everybody understood what had happened to the people who had been taken there.” [Act of the State extraordinary commission drawn up on October 12, 1944; RG 22.002M: GARF Fond 7021, Opis 6, Delo 79]
Ananyiv, founded in 1753, is located close to the current border with Moldova, 177 km north of Odesa. Some records state that the first Jewish community dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. By 1897, the Jewish community made up 3,527 people (21% of the total population). There was a synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, a Talmud Torah which operated from 1880. As Ananyiv was an important export center, the majority of Jews were involved in the grain, clothing, and hardware trades. Many of them worked in manufactured workshops or in textile cooperatives established in the 1920s. There were several industries, such as oil refineries and flour mills which also belonged to Jews. According to local villagers, there was a Jewish kolkhoz called Ekarta. During the course of its history, the Jewish community suffered from several waves of pogroms (in 1881 and 1920) during which many Jewish homes and shops were destroyed and several hundred Jews were killed, including the members of the self-defense unit. Due to the pogroms, the Jewish population decreased. There were just 1,779 Jews remaining on the eve of the war. The village was occupied by the Germans on August 7, 1941.
According to local witnesses, straight after the German invasion, all of the Jews were marked with numbers on their backs and were forced to perform forced labor.
A couple of weeks after the invasion, on August 25, 1941, the entire Jewish community was gathered in the center of Ananyiv, under the pretext of an organized meeting. At least 600 people came and were taken 3-4 km away from the village where they were shot in the anti-tank ditches. During Yahad’s field investigation, our team discovered that the number of victims was 1350, as opposed to the 600 mentioned in the archives. According to an eyewitness to the shooting, the Jews were shot fully-dressed in small groups on the edge of the pit. The shooters fired with machine guns. All the roads were cut off in advance so no-one could approach the site.
From September 1941, Ananyiv became part of Transnistria. On September 2-3, the remaining Jews were assembled and taken to the Dubasari ghetto, but on their way they were shot close to the village of Mostove.
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