In mid-August 1942, local residents told some Jews from Włodzimierzec that pits were being dug on the road to the village of Żołkinie. On Sunday, August 23, 1942, as the workweek began, the number of Ukrainian auxiliary policemen guarding the forced labor detachments increased. They told the Jews of a plan to remove all those who were unfit for productive labor. Faced with this threat, the Judenrat considered the possibility of setting the ghetto on fire in the event of a murder operation, hoping to create enough confusion to enable people to flee. However, after careful consideration, this idea was rejected. The town was then surrounded by police forces. Most of the Jews who had tried to run away were shot dead. On August 27, all the Jews were ordered by the chief of the Gendarmerie (the German rural Order Police) to gather in the market square on the next day, for yet another roll call; he promised that they would all be allowed to return home afterward. On that evening, the Ukrainian police chief, Andrei Mokha, offered to hide his friend Yakov Eisenberg, the head of the Judenrat, together with his family members, but Eisenberg declined this offer, saying that he wished to die with his community. In the morning of August 28, the Jews were driven out of their houses in the ghetto by gendarmes and Ukrainian auxiliary policemen, and taken to the market square, which had been cordoned off by the police. Some Jews tried to escape during the roundup, but many were killed in the town streets. The Germans divided the assembled Jews into three groups: the Judenrat members and their families, the skilled workers, and the "worthless Jews". At a certain point, some Jews tried to escape – apparently, after an accidental shot had been fired – but the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police opened fire, killing many Jews as they scattered in all directions through the streets of the town. In the afternoon of that day, the remaining Jews, beginning with the Judenrat members and their families, were led by armed Germans and Ukrainian policemen (reinforced by a German unit from the town of Sarny) in the direction of the village of Żołkinie, 1 kilometer south of Włodzimierzec. Upon arriving in the Żołkinie Forest, the Jews saw three big pits that had been dug by peasants from the nearby villages. Here, the men and women were separated and ordered to strip naked. Then, the victims had to jump into the pit in groups of five, and, after being positioned with their heads toward the shooter, they were shot with a machine gun or a rifle by a member of the German murder squad who was standing inside the pit. Children were thrown into the pits alive, and then killed with hand grenades. In all likelihood, the shooting was orchestrated by a squad of the Security Police and SD from Równe, and it was carried out with the assistance of the German Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian police. Local peasants collected the bodies of those killed in the town, taking them to be buried in the same mass graves. In total, some 2,000 Jews were murdered during the liquidation of the ghetto. After this murder operation, hundreds of Jews (including Yakov Shalita, the community's rabbi) who had been caught hiding in and outside the town were taken in groups to the Żołkinie Forest and shot at that site, as well.

More information: Yad Vashem