1 Execution site(s)
Anastasia B., born in 1931: "My family hid a Jewish girl for three years. She was my age, and her name was Milita. But my mother changed her name and called her Maria. She did it on purpose to protect her and us. She told everyone that she was her daughter. Milita’s father was also in hiding. He hid at my grandmother’s house. There was another Jewish boy who hid in the village, in the stables. One day, a Romanian gendarme came and asked where the Jews were hiding. Someone must have told him that there were Jews in the village because he was very sure about it. Of course, we didn’t tell him anything. Milita hid behind the Slavic ‘Pich’ oven. My father told him that there were no Jews because they had been deported by the Soviets to Siberia in 1940. The Romanian left. The same night, my father took the two Jewish men, changed them into women’s clothes and took them outside the village. After the war, Milita’s father came back to take her with him to America.” (Witness n°2331U, interviewed in Babyn, on October 25, 2017)
Babyn is a village located on the border of the Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. It is located in the historical Bukovina region, 50 km (31mi) northwest of Chernivtsi. Between 1772 and 1918, Zalishchyky was ruled by the Austrian states of the Habsburg monarchy, Austrian Empire, and finally the Austro-Hungarian empire. During the interwar period, it was taken over by Poland. There is no information about the Jewish community. According to the local witness interviewed by Yahad - In Unum, Babyn was home to Ukrainians and some Poles.
Babyn was occupied by Romanian forces in early July 1941. The village remained under Romanian occupation, and the border with the German occupied territories was 2 km away. In July 1941, shortly after the occupation, a group of 31 Jews was rounded up in nearby villages and brought to Babyn to be shot. According to a local eyewitness, the shootings were conducted by Romanian gendarmes who fired with a machine gun. The victims were shot together, on the edge of the pit without being forced to undress beforehand. If we are to believe the accounts of the local witness, the Jews were brought from villages such as Kyseliv, Borivtsi and others.
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