Testimony of Mariia Trufanova

German forces led a massive surprise attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. They advanced rapidly and captured hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers within months. German forces reached the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don in November 1941. Soviet forces pushed the invaders out of Rostov-on-Don temporarily, but German forces retook the city in July 1942. In August 1942, several local citizens witnessed German forces murder thousands of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) and thousands of local Jewish men, women, and children.¹

Soviet officials began to document crimes committed under German occupation even as the war was still happening. Soviet authorities created the “Extraordinary State Commission” in November 1942 to investigate the mass murder and persecution of Soviet citizens.² Commission staff launched hundreds of investigations across areas newly-liberated from German forces. They gathered forensic evidence, took photographs, and conducted interviews with witnesses and survivors.

An investigator with a local branch of the Commission collected the featured testimony from 39-year-old Mariia Trufanova on November 24, 1943, after the Red Army had liberated Rostov-on-Don from German occupation. Trufanova’s testimony describes how German occupation forces massacred Soviet POWs at a ravine near her house and then murdered the members of Rostov-on-Don’s Jewish community the following week.³ German authorities had ordered local citizens to leave that part of town, but Trufanova and several others had ignored the orders.

Trufanova’s statement makes it clear that German forces were actively murdering captured Soviet POWs in addition to allowing them to die from starvation, disease, and exposure.⁴ She and her neighbors witnessed German forces transporting Soviet POWs to the area starting on August 2. Members of a German mobile killing unit (Einsatzgruppe) executed these POWs over the next several days by shooting and gassing.⁵ Trufanova describes the use of a mobile gas van—a vehicle that piped poisonous gas into the enclosed rear cabin in order to kill those who had been forced inside.⁶

Trufanova’s statement also shows some of the connections between the mass murder of Soviet POWs and the mass murder of Jewish people. At times, Soviet POWs were killed at the same locations, by the same people, and with the same methods.⁷ Many of the captured Red Army soldiers killed by the Germans were Jewish, but German forces kept the members of Rostov-on-Don’s Jewish community separate from the POWs and murdered them as different groups. They executed only a portion of the captured Soviet soldiers—but Trufanova’s testimony notes that the massacre of Jews included “old people, adults, and children.”

The mass shootings in Rostov-on-Don in August 1942 were part of a widespread campaign of mass murder unleashed by German forces during the occupation of Soviet territories. The Nazis targeted Jews,⁸ Roma and Sinti, and others they considered “racial enemies” in mass killings throughout eastern Europe. German forces massacred thousands of Soviet POWs because they viewed them as “racial enemies” who threatened the Nazi regime’s plans to conquer and exploit Soviet territories.⁹

Trufanova’s testimony shows that German forces targeted different groups at the same killing sites in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union. Her account also shows how these groups sometimes could share some experiences—but also how their experiences were unique. Witness testimonies like hers—along with other documentation gathered by the Extraordinary State Commission—became evidence in many postwar trials, including the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, very few of the Germans responsible for the murders of Soviet POWs, Jews, and others in the Soviet Union were ever prosecuted.

Maris Rowe-McCulloch, "Poison on the Lips of Children: Rumours and Reality in Discussions of the Holocaust in Rostov-on-Don (USSR) and Beyond," The Journal of Holocaust Research 33, no. 2 (2019), 157.

For more on the Extraordinary State Commission, see Marina Yu Sorokina, "On the Way to Nuremberg: The Soviet Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes," in The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and Its Policy Consequences Today, edited by Beth A. Griech-Polelle (Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2009), 18–32.

Investigators took half a dozen witness statements from people who lived near the mass killing sites in Rostov-on-Don. For more, see Christina Winkler, "Rostov-on-Don 1942: A Little-Known Chapter of the Holocaust," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 30, no. 1, (2016), 112–115.

Scholars estimate that 3.3 million of the roughly 5.7 million Soviet POWs held in German captivity during World War II were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or abuse. See the related sources in Experiencing History, including Drawings by Alexei Mikhailovich Pankin and Memoir of Fedor Fedorovich Khudiakov. On the persecution and mass killing of Soviet POWs, see Alex Kay, "Extermination of Captive Red Army Soldiers," Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021): 146–68; and Thomas Earl Porter, "Forgotten Genocide: The Case of Soviet Prisoners of War," Prisoners of War and Forced Labour: Histories of War and Occupation, edited by Marianne Neerland Soleim (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010): 19–34.

Excerpts from the Extraordinary State Commission’s files for Rostov Oblast, city of Rostov-on-Don, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, RG 22.002M op.40 d.853 ll.29–42.

Mark Ward, Sr., Deadly Documents: Technical Communication, Organizational Discourse, and the Holocaust: Lessons from the Rhetorical Work of Everyday Texts (Amityville: Baywood Publishing, 2014), 29–30.

Other examples of sites where both Jews and Soviet POWs were killed and then buried include Babyn Yar and Ponary Forest near Vilnius, Lithuania. To learn more, see Kazimierz Sakowicz, Yitzhak Arad and Laurence Weinbaum, Ponary Diary, 1941–1943: A Bystander's Account of a Mass Murder, 1st ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press., 2005), xiii–xiv.

Roughly 2 million Jews were murdered in mass shootings in the Soviet Union under German occupation. For more details, see Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008).

Roughly 3.3 million Soviet POWs in German captivity were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or abuse. For more details, see the related collection on Soviet POWs in Experiencing History. See also: Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Third Edition, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 204; and Thomas Earl Porter, "Forgotten Genocide: The Case of Soviet Prisoners of War," Prisoners of War and Forced Labour: Histories of War and Occupation, edited by Marianne Neerland Soleim (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 19–34.

Record of Questioning

November 24, 1943; Rostov-on-Don; [questioning] of the citizen Mariia Vasil’evna TRUFANOVA, born 1904, residing in the village 2-ia [Vtoraia ] Zmiyovka, Narskaia Street, No. 6.

Essentially, in the present questioning about the fascists’ crimes during the period of occupation of Rostov-on-Don, I explained the following: After the German invaders occupied the city of Rostov-on-Don on [July] 24, 1942, beginning at 2 p.m. on August 2, 1942, two black, closed trucks went to the sand pit. Captured Red Army soldiers were brought in these trucks, placed above the pit, and shot by German killers.

On August 4, 1942, closed black trucks with Red Army prisoners started to appear at the sand pit. Red Army soldiers were brought out of the trucks, placed at the edge of the pit, and shot. The murdered Red Army men fell over the cliff, and they were not buried. The trucks kept appearing from morning to late evening; there were ten of them. From August 2 on, the headquarters of the German killers was on the premises of a facility for rendering animal fat. The guards were reinforced, and none of the civilian inhabitants were allowed near the pit where the Germans were carrying out their hideous crimes. Anyone who dared to go take a look never returned from there again, but was shot on the spot. On August 8, 1942, I went to my kitchen garden in the evening, and I saw a closed truck come to the sand pit. They brought Red Army prisoners out of the truck and placed them at the edge of the cliff. The prisoners cried out, and one Red [word or words missing here; possibly: Army POW shouted,] [“]Anyone who survives, take revenge on the German monsters, the killers, for us.[”] The Germans shot them, and they fell over the edge of the pit. The Germans brought some lifeless ones out of the truck and threw them over the edge and into the sand pit. And so it went all day long, one truck after another drove up. Red Army prisoners dug holes in the cliff [sic], and the German killers shot them afterwards. They did not bury the victims, but only covered them with 2 or 3 centimeters of soil. Captive Red Army men and civilian inhabitants were brought in mobile gas vans from Rostov-on-Don; they were shot at the top of the sand pit and thrown over the edge of the pit.

Many Jews, communists, Komsomol members, and leading individuals of the Soviet Motherland were brought and shot by the German killers. This vile, barbarous crime began on August 2, 1942, and continued every day until December 1942. The German killers carried out the most horrible and large-scale shootings on the celebration days of October 7 and 8. The trucks stopped bringing people to the sand pit [word or words missing] it got dirty and flooded the small Temernik River with water. At this sand pit, no fewer than 15,000 Red Army prisoners and civilians were shot by the German killers.

On August 11, 1942, there was a mass shooting of Jews in the plant nursery of the Botanical Garden. On this day, the Germans forcibly ordered the inhabitants of our village to move to the center of the city of Rostov-on-Don, and on this day all the residents left their homes and went into the city. The whole time, the German killers were bringing the Jewish population, old people, adults, and children, and shooting them in the plant nursery of the Botanical Garden, carrying out these vile crimes until all the Jews had been exterminated.

Trufanova.

The record of the questioning was made by
the Deputy Operational Representative, VKhS
Militia Branch Office 5 – signature.

True: [Signature]

ab.

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