According to one testimony, on the second day of the first murder operation in Bachów (on June 3, 1942) a group of several hundred Jews was taken under guard to the Jewish cemetery in the city. Upon their arrival at the site the Jews were ordered by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen to strip naked and then, in groups of 5, they were taken to a pit where they were shot to death by a German unit. According to the same testimony, the Gebietskommissar of Kowel Erich Kassner, the head of the Kowel regional Order Police (Gendarmerie) Philipp Rapp, the head of the Kowel urban police (Schutzpolizei) Fritz Manthei, and the head of the Ukrainian auxiliary police of the Kowel District Shabatura personally shot Jews to death with their pistols. Ukrainian auxiliary policemen guarded the victims during this murder operation. During the second murder operation of Kowel's Jews, which began on August 19, about several hundred Jews who had been caught in hiding in the course of the following period were held for several days in the Great Synagogue of Kowel, with no food or water and in very poor sanitary conditions. The Jews were constantly searched for valuables. During this period, according to several testimonies, Ukrainian auxiliary policemen would take out groups of young Jewish girls and rape them before returning them to the synagogue. During the days of their captivity in the synagogue many people managed to write last testimonies, wills, and requests for vengeance or pleas for life on the walls of the synagogue – these inscriptions were in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish. These writings, found after the war, were copied before they were painted over. When a sufficient number of people were gathered in the synagogue, they were led in groups, by truck to the Jewish cemetery. Upon their arrival, usually in the evening, the Jews, mainly women and children, were forced to strip naked and to step onto boards laid across the pit with their faces towards it. Then they were shot to death with machine-guns by a group of Security Police and SD men from Łuck, with the active participation of members of the Gendarmerie. Kassner, Rapp, and Manthei were personally in charge of this murder operation as well. Afterwards, Ukrainian auxiliary policemen who guarded the site during the execution loaded the belonging of the victims onto trucks and sold them to the local population in Kowel.

More information: Yad Vashem

On June 1 or 2, 1942 the head of the Judenrat, Wili Pomerantz, received an order to compile a list of those Jews living in the old city ghetto who were not to be deported and, thus, were required to move to the new city ghetto. The same evening members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police received an order to come to the Gendarmerie post. They were held hostage there and then ordered to go on the next day to the ghetto in the old city and announce to the Jews incarcerated there that they were going to be sent to work in the East. Early in the morning members of the Ukrainian auxiliary police and the Gendarmerie surrounded the "useless" ghetto. Members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police, accompanied by German and Ukrainian policemen, went from house to house and drove the Jews out onto the street. The Jewish residents, mainly women, children, and elderly people, thus had to leave their homes immediately, with little baggage and food for only several days. From there they were taken to the market square situated on Brest (Brześć) Street. Those who tried to hide but were found, as well as the elderly, sick people, and children, who couldn't line up quickly enough or lagged behind during the procession, were shot to death on the spot. According to one testimony, upon arriving at the square, the Jews had to put their gold and their paper money into a box that had been placed there. During the round up at the square 300 Jews were shot to death. They were later buried at the Jewish cemetery of Kowel. Then the rest of the Jews were taken by truck or on foot, under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary policemen, to the railroad station and from there by freight train to a sand quarry near Bachów village, located 7 kilometers northeast of Kowel. Upon their arrival at the site the victims were ordered to strip naked and forced in groups into pits, where they were shot with submachine-guns in the back of the head by German policemen and a Security Polie unit. At the murder site, according to several testimonies, before being shot, Yosef Averbuch, a teacher at the former Hebrew gymnasium, gave a speech in which he condemned the Germans for killing the Jews, anticipated their fall, and calling for revenge. Soviet prisoners of war covered the pit with earth and, later, with chlorine and lime. After the shooting a freight train took the clothing of the victims back to the Kowel railway station where, after the clothing was unloaded, the train was filled with new victims, who were taken in their turn to the murder site. Among the several thousand murdered Jews were some members of the Judenrat and the Jewish police, and Mauricio Maizel, the last head of the Warsaw Jewish community. This murder operation lasted three days. On August 19, 1942 German and Ukrainian auxiliary police surrounded the ghetto of the old town, where shortly before this several thousand working Jews and their families had been resettled from the ghetto in the new city. The Jewish workers and their families were also collected at the Market Square on Brisk Street and then taken, under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police, by truck and then by train to the Bachów murder site, where they were shot to death by an SD unit. These two murder operations were headed and carried out by the Gebietskommissar of Kowel Erich Kassner, the head of Kowel's regional order police (Gendarmerie) Philipp Rapp, and the head of the Kowel German urban police (Schutzpolizei) Fritz Manthei. Afterwards the Germans put signs saying "Beware Mines!" around the murder site in order to prevent the local population from approaching it.

More information: Yad Vashem