On May 26, 1942, after the Jewish men had been taken from the collection point to Szibiena Hura, women, children, and some sick persons were taken by truck and on foot, guarded by Gendarmerie (German rural order police) and Ukrainian auxiliary police, outside Dubno to the former airfield, located a kilometer from Surmicze village. Upon their arrival at the killing site, the victims were taken to pits previously dug by Soviet prisoners of war. They were forced in groups into the pit and had to lie there facedown; then they were shot to death in the back of the head by a unit of a mobile SS squad from Równe. Then another group had to lie down on the top of the bodies and was also shot to death. According to one testimony, at the end of this murder operation, after their mothers had been shot to death, approximately 300 small children who had been left behind, were pushed by the SS men into a pit, into which they tossed two grenades, thus killing those children. The ChGK report also indicates some women and children died of suffocation since their mouths and noses had been tightly bound by rags. This report also states that high-ranking German military personnel were present during this murder operation. The killing operation lasted for two days. On October 5, 1942 most of the inmates from the skilled workers' ghetto who did not have special certificates were collected on Rybnaia Street and from there taken by truck to the Surmicze killing site. Upon their arrival, armed Ukrainian auxiliary policemen who were assigned as guards on the trucks, made the people - men, women, and children -- get off the trucks. Then the people had to undress and to put their clothes in designated places. Afterwards, naked, the victims were made to descend the several steps which had been cut in the clay wall of the pit and lie facedown inside it. They were shot to death with submachine-guns by SS men. These two murder operations were headed and participated in by the Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) of Dubno Werner Brocks and the head of the Dubno Gendarmerie von Papke.

More information: Yad Vashem