Sara Glejch, Ukraine, 1937

Sara Glejch - Mass execution

Video Gebärdensprache

Audio Text

“14 October – The Gestapo is already in the town.
15 October – The looting continues.
17 October – Today it was announced that all those who have been registered are to appear at the offices tomorrow morning and are to bring all their valuables with them.”

This is how the student Sara Glejch describes the occupation of Mariupol by German troops in autumn 1941.
The killing starts a few days after they took the city.
The pits where the shootings take place are located outside the town.
Sara Glejch, her sister Fanja and Fanja’s young son Vladja are forced to go to this location.

“Then it was our turn.
We were ordered to strip down to our vests, then they searched us for money and documents and chased us along the edge of the pit.
The pits [were] full to the top with corpses. We climbed over the bodies.
Vladja kept asking: ‘Are we going swimming? Why have we got undressed? Come on, Mummy, let’s go home, it’s not nice here.’
Fanja picked him up because he found it hard to walk on the slippery clay.”

When the Germans start to shoot, Sara Glejch falls into the pit.
When she regains consciousness, she is lying under the bodies of the dead and dying.
She is uninjured.
With her clothes stained with blood, she sets off to look for a hiding place.
She is taken in by relatives and later on manages to reach unoccupied territory.
Sara Glejch survives the war.