1 Execution site(s)
Dimitriy G.: "Right after they arrived, the Germans came with a truck and a machine gun. They rounded up all the inhabitants of the village in the center. They demanded to know if there were any communists, Komsomols, or Jews. The Jews, maybe 18 of them, left the crowd and went with the Germans. The Germans also took two Komsomols. The Germans ordered the other villagers to leave. I then hid in the bushes and saw the Germans shootubg all the Jews in a pit in the forest, in a sand quarry." (Witness N°508, interviewed in June 2011)
Verkhovye was a small village 10 km north of Vitebsk, along the Dvina River. Today, it is part of the larger village of Ruba. The village was under German occupation from 1941 to 1943.
On June 13, 1942, the Germans began a punitive Aktion against the village as part of an anti-partisan Aktion. Having gathered all the inhabitants in the village square, the Germans selected 18 Jews, lined them up at the edge of a sand pit and killed them. They also killed several communists.
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