Zymyne (Zimino, former Jewish colony Peretsfeld) | Crimea

/ Georgiy B., born in 1936:” They gathered adults in a Klub for so-called meeting like they always did. They were taken to the execution site and shot. After the shooting, the Germans came back and threw a party.”  © Guillaum Yahad-In Unum team interviewing a witness in Zymyne.  © Guillaume Ribot  /Yahad-In Unum Natalia B., born in 1919: “I had a Jewish neighbor. When the Jews were taking my neighbor made me a sign with his hand and said: ”You can be happy now because I won’t bother you by asking to dance with me anymore”.  © Guillaume Ribot  /Yahad-In Unum Execution site near Zymyne where approximately 100 Jews were shot and thrown into a well.  © Guillaume Ribot  /Yahad-In Unum

Execution of Jews in Peretsfeld

1 Execution site(s)

Kind of place before:
Well
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1941-1944
Number of victims:
About 103
Witnesses interviewed:
2

Witness interview

Natalia B., born in 1919, remembers: “I saw how the Germans rounded up the Jews. Back then, we had a Jewish neighbor. When the Germans arrested him, he made me a sign with his hand and said: “You should be glad now because I won’t bother you by asking you to dance with me anymore”. There was another Jew I knew. His name was Waserman. He fled to Simferopol while his wife and his daughter were caught and murdered here, in the village.” (Witness N°273, interviewed in Zymyne, on January 9, 2006).

Soviet archives

“In the village of Peretzfeld [Zimino] on November 15, 1941, a killing squad composed of nine people and a German officer at its head gathered under threat of guns the entire Jewish population, in number of 103 people, in the Klub. Then, the fascists’ monsters took them to the hamlet of Topcharly located 3 km of Peretzfeld where they were all shot. The victims’ bodies were thrown in a dry 80-90 m deep well.” [Act drawn up by State Extraordinary Commission (ChGK) ; RG.22-002M : Fond 7021, Opis 9, Delo 84]

Historical note

Zymyne, known as Peretsfeld until 1945, located about 100 km northwest of Simferopol. Peretsfeld was established in the late 1920’s as a Jewish agricultural colony. In the early 1930’s a kolkhoz was created in there. There was a four-year Yiddish school. In 1932, 470 Jews lived in the village.  Peretsfeld was occupied by the Germans in late October 1941. The majority of Jews succeeded to evacuate before the German occupation.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

The remaining local Jews as well as those who stayed in hiding in the nearby villages were first  rounded-up and taken to the Klub on November 14, 1941, and then were murdered near the hamlet of Topcharly, 3km away of Zymyne. According to the local witness interviewed by Yahad, the children were taken in two trucks and were suffocated with the exhaust gases, while the adults were marched to the site to be shot. Once they were shot and their bodies were thrown into a well. According to the Soviet archives, one woman who was in a column was pregnant and went into labour. Later, she was killed and her baby was thrown into the well. The execution was conducted by nine soldiers from Sonderkommando 11b.According to the Yahad’s witness after the execution, the murder threw a party at the local starosta’s house.

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