"In the same morning
(October 23, 1941 --author's note), gallows appeared
on the streets and markets of Odessa, while others
were shot at random, so that in the same morning,
about 5,000 people were executed in Odessa. At noon,
the executions stopped, but the gendarmes and the
police started to gather thousands of people, which
they imprisoned in the big prison in
Odessa.
On the 24th of October
1941, the Second Company from the 10th battalion
machine-gun group received the order to escort these
unlucky human beings to a place, where they didn't
suspected what will happen to them, at the borders of
Odessa, between the Dalnic barriers, where four
warehouses existed of about 25-30 meters long and of
about 10-15 meters broad.
The Jews -- children, old
women, old sick people of all ages after forming a
column were driven like cattle to the slaughter,
towards those warehouses.
The transportation lasted
until 14 o'clock of October the 24th, 1941. During the
transportation, many of those in the column, because
of their weakness, fell down immediately and were shot
by the gendarmes, so the road from the prison to the
place of execution, which was 3 kilometers long, was
full of bodies of children, women and sick people
…
The first group brought to
the execution place was of about 40-50 people, which
were tightly tied with ropes, and was put into an
anti-tank ditch, turned with their faces towards the
ground, forming the ditch's wall.
Lieutenant-colonel Deleanu
Nicolae gave personally the shooting order, reminding
the soldiers to shoot each one of them, to make
economy of time and ammunition.
Ascertaining that this
procedure is not good enough for the initial purpose
it was decided to proceed at a mass execution.
Therefore, in the first three warehouses were put the
men and some women, which couldn't be separated from
their husbands, and in the fourth warehouse were put
the other women and children.
As the witnesses said, in
the four warehouses there were over 5,000
people.
For the mass executions,
holes in the walls of the warehouses were made, in
which machine-guns were introduced. At the order of
lieutenant-colonel Deleanu Nicolae and
lieutenant-colonel Niculescu M. Coca, a full shot was
made. The unbearable screams covered the noise made by
machine-guns, producing a terrible uproar. But the
bullets couldn't reach the last survivors. Observing
that even this procedure is not good enough to satisfy
the criminally desire to finish as fast as possible
this macabre operation, and because in the month of
October, night was coming earlier, at about 17
o'clock, they decided to do something even more cruel,
which was to burn the survivors, a way which they
thought will erase any trace of the savage
horrors.
In order to realize this,
the holes made by the soldiers in the walls were
blocked, as well as the exits of the warehouses, the
attics and the roofs were filled with straws, the
walls and the roofs were splashed with gasoline and
gas which were also thrown inside with a
hose.
Afterwards, at a short
order, the warehouses were set on fire.
Giant flames raised to the
sky, and in this consuming fire dead and alive united
and everything turned into ashes, but not enough to
erase all the traces of this horrible
crime.
Through the roof it could
still be seen how people, turned into living torches,
were trying to escape from the terrible fire that
surrounded them.
But the gendarmes,
respecting the order from lieutenant-colonel Niculescu
M. Coca, were shooting those who were desperately
trying to escape by any way.
In the darkness that
started to surround them, the sight of the naked,
burning people, trying to escape with their last means
and powers, in order to save their life, was for the
present one a hallucinating and terrifying scene,
which was beyond the imagination of the most fantastic
writers.
……………………………………………………………
By using these procedures,
by night fall, all the Jews from the first two
warehouses were exterminated, so that the next day the
other two warehouses would follow, among them the one
in which the children and the women were
locked.
An entire night and most
of the next morning, women, children and old people,
locked in these last two warehouses fought the pain of
an imminent death and the poor hope that maybe the
thousands of people sacrificed in the preceding day,
could have diminished the blood thirst of the cruel
executors of the reprisal orders.
These were hopes in vain,
because the crimes, apparently, didn't weaken the
ardor of the odious killers, because the next day
everything continued with the same results as in the
previous day.
And more, in order to
impress the population of Odessa with the effects of
the reprisals, at 5:35 PM of the 25th of October 1941,
the warehouse in which were the men, after the ones
inside were machine-gunned, was blown up".
1)
