1 Execution site(s)
Maria K., born in 1935: “We had a man called Ligmann; it was probably his surname. There was another Jewish woman married to Haisyn. She is buried in our cemetery today. I saved three Jews, but a fourth one died. Their names were Lyuba, Rakhil and one boy called Mot, but he wasn’t the girls’ brother. I don’t know where Mot disappeared to when the Jews were caught here. As for Lyuba and Rakhil - they survived. I received several letters from them later, but I lost them. I don’t know their address. They are probably already dead.
Y. U. : These people, Lyuba, Rahil and Mot, were they from your village?
Witness : No, they were brought by force from the mountains, from Moldova. They were all herded into the hen house. And I saved them because they all came hungry. My father didn’t go off to war and he brought a lot of salt. And they all ran to me in order to get some salt. And previously there was a corn field located on the place where we grow sunflowers today. They didn’t have anything to eat. So, I entered the field and stole the corn heads for them. That’s how they ate. But I don’t know where Mot disappeared.” (Witness n°2646U, interviewed in Kosharyntsi, on September 9,2019)
“In the village of Kosharyntsi, there was a camp with the detained Jewish population, about 800 people, deported by the Romanian authorities from Bessarabia and Bukovina in the fall 1941. 730 of them died as a result of the bad treatment, violence and beatings. The responsible for this was the head of the Gendarmerie from Kpaihorod, Master sergeant Vartsan, pretor of the Kopaihorod Prefecture Vode, engineer of the Prefecture Nikuleski, the following gendarmes of the Malitskiy village, Silvestrov and Mirch.” [Act n°10, drawn up by Soviet State Extraordinary Commission (ChGK), on April 15, GARF 7021-54-1239, p.28]
Kosharyntsi is located along the Nemiya River in the Kopaihorod district, 51km (32mi) north of Mohyliv-Podilskiy. According to the local witnesses, the majority of the population was Ukrainian. There were some Jews, but without an official record it is impossible to know how many there were. The majority of them were either merchants or artisans. For instance, the witnesses interviewed by Yahad remembered Mr. Liedman who had a commerce. According to the 1939 census, there were 1,903 Jews in the entire Kopaihorod district.
Kosharyntsi was occupied by the German and Romanian troops in the second half of July 1941. After a brief German occupation, the village remained under the Romanians and became part of Transnistria in September 1941. Shortly after, a ghetto was created where the Jews deported in the fall of 1941 from Bessarabia and Bukovina, mainly from Khotyn, Lipcani, Briceni and Novoseyltsia [or Noua Sulita], were confined. According to the Soviet Archives, there were about 800 Jews, 730 of whom died over the winter 1941-1942 due to cold, bad treatment and beatings. Some were shot dead. According to the local witness interviewed by Yahad, the ghetto was created in the hen houses located in the former kolkhoz territory. As there was not enough space, some Jews stayed with the locals. The local Jews were not confined in the ghetto; they continued to live in their homes. Several Jews from the column, especially those who could not walk, were shot dead on the spot. All the bodies were buried in a clay quarry located outside the village in the western part of Kosharyntsi. By March 1943, about 170 Jews, most likely not counting the Ukrainian local Jews, were registered in Kosharyntsi. By the end of the 1943, about 168 Jews remained in Kosharyntsi. They continued to live in the ghetto until the liberation of the area by the Red Army in March 1944.
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