1 Execution site(s)
Pyotr B., born in 1932, remembers: “Four or five days after the Germans’ arrival, they started to gather the Jews who didn’t have time to flee. They were promised to be transferred to their homeland. They were so happy and they took their bundles and got in the truck. Everything was supervised by the Germans and local police who had been created by that time. Once they were in the trucks, they left. The local women started to cry because in the village, there was a rumor that they were going to be killed.” (Witness n°521, interviewed in Plodovitoye, on August 13, 2015)
Plodovitoye is located on the banks of the Srednaya Lasta River, 200km north of Elista and 100m south of Volgograd. Historically home to Russians and Kalmyks, there were no Jewish families living in the village before the war. There were two kolkhozes, Pobeda and Illich. According to the witnesses Yahad interviewed, a lot of refugees, Jews, Gypsies, and Ukrainians among them, passed through the village to move beyond the Volga River. They stayed for several nights with the inhabitants and continued on their way. According to some sources, once the war broke out, about 50 Jewish families moved into Plodovitoe from Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd). The Germans occupied the village in mid-August 1942. After remaining there for several months, the Germans left and the village was taken over by Romanian military units.
Even if the German occupation didn’t last a long time, the Germans managed to exterminate all the Jewish refugees. Thanks to the fieldwork and the three local witnesses, Yahad discovered that about 30-50 Jewish refugees were executed in clay pits, not far from the village. There were women, children and the elderly among them.
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