On July 15 (or, according to some testimonies on July 14 or 18, or in mid-June), 1942 all the Jews from the Zvenigorodka ghetto were taken to the town prison. After the able-bodied people and the skilled workers were separated from the rest, about 1,300 people of all ages and both sexes were taken to the Dubrava Tract, 15 kilometers southwest of Zvenigorodka, forced to strip naked, and then shot dead at a trench. According to some of the eyewitnesses the massacre lasted for three days, with only children being murdered on the second day. The perpetrators of the massacre were members of either the German Security or Order Police and local auxiliary policemen. According to one testimony at the end of August 1943 Jews from Zvenigorodka who had been deported earlier to labor camps and returned to the town, together with the skilled workers who had remained in the ghetto after the massacre of the summer of 1942, were taken to the Dubrova Forest and shot dead. It is not known who were the perpetrators of the latter massacre.

More information: Yad Vashem

In September 1941 about 100 Jewish men and teenage boys from Zvenigorodka were collected, ostensibly for work but, according to eyewitnesses, they were taken to Lapteva Levada (a meadow a short distance east of Zvenigorodka), where they were shot to death by members of Einsatzgruppe C.

More information: Yad Vashem

The inmates of the labor camp in the village of Nemorozh, 5 kilometers northwest of Zvenigorodka, who became ill and incapable of work and those who attempted to escape but were caught were shot to death and buried in a mass grave near the Nemorozh stables, which served as barracks for the camp’s inmates. It is not known who carried out these shootings or the exact number of the victims who were murdered in this way.

More information: Yad Vashem