One month after the onset of the occupation, the Germans began to arrest the Jews of Talalayevka and the surrounding villages. Twenty-eight Jews were imprisoned in a single room in Talalayevka. They were then forced to perform hard labor in the village. On January 19, 1942, German soldiers and local policemen rearrested these Jews and took them to a pit in the forest on the outskirts of the village. There, the Jews had to strip naked, and were then shot by the collaborationist police officers, who used machine guns. Immediately after the massacre of the twenty-eight Jews, another two Jews were executed at the site. That same night, another group of twenty people were shot at the huge pit. These included Jews, partisans, and Soviet POWs. Later in 1942, another six Jewish civilians from the surrounding villages were shot at the same spot.

More information: Yad Vashem

On November 22, 1941, a German mobile killing squad arrested two Jewish families – about eight individuals – in Bolotnitsa and took them to the village of Talalayevka. There, they were shot by the same killing squad in December that year. While the exact shooting site cannot be identified, they were probably killed on the outskirts of Talalayevka, in the same area where the local Jews, along with evacuees and Soviet POWs, were shot.

More information: Yad Vashem