Major Wilhelm Trapp [battalion commander] stated that in the place where we had found ourselves we were to carry out a mass execution by shooting, and he clearly stated that those we were to shoot were Jews. During his speech, he told us to think of our wives and children in the fatherland, who had to face aerial bombardment. Thinking of such matters was to help us carry out the imminent task. Major Trapp said the action was not his liking, but that he had received such orders from higher command. ...

These Jews were to be escorted to the forest on the orders of Sergeant Steinmetz. We went with the Jews. After passing two hundred metres, Steinmetz ordered the Jews to lie on the ground next to each other in a row. I’d wish to add here these were only women and children. The children were about 12 years old… I had to shoot an old, over sixty-year-old woman. I remember her clearly saying to me, something like, make it quick… Next to me was policeman Koch… He had to shoot a boy, around twelve years old. We were clearly told to hold the pistol barrel some 20 cm from the head. Koch had obviously failed to do this, because before we left the place of execution, all my colleagues were laughing at me. And the reason for this were bits of the child’s brain had splashed on my sleeve and were still stuck to it. When I asked him why he was laughing, Koch, pointing to the pieces of brain on my sleeve, said: ‘That’s my little Jew’s brain.’ And he said that with distinct pride…

When on 5 October 1942 I arrived at the building office in Dubno, my foreman Hubert Mönnikes … told me that near the building site in three great trenches, 30 metres long and three metres deep, Jews from Dubno were being executed. Every day 1,500 were killed. During this action, all the around 5,000 Jews then still living in Dubno were to be liquidated.

Accompanied by Mönnikes, I drove to the building site and near it saw large earth mounds. Each was around 30 metres long and more or less two metres high. Parked in front of the mounds were several trucks. People from these trucks were being hurried along by armed Ukrainian policemen under the supervision of an SS man. The policemen on the trucks served as guards and drove from trench to trench. All the victims wore a yellow Jewish symbol on the front and back of their clothes.

Mönnikes and I approached these trenches. No one tried to stop us. Then at one point I heard from beyond the mounds series of gunshots being fired at short intervals. The people descending from the trucks, men women and children of various ages, were ordered to undress by an SS man holding a riding crop. In a designated place these people had to place their clothes, separately sorted into shoes, underwear and external garments. I saw a pile of some 800 to 1,000 shoes and other piles of underwear and clothes.
With no crying or tears, these naked people stood around, huddled together in family groups, kissing and hugging each other to say goodbye, and waiting for the sign of another SS man who was standing on the edge of a pit and also holding a riding crop. During the 15 minutes when I stood nearby, I did not hear a single complaint or plea for mercy. I observed a family of perhaps eight people, comprising a man and a woman aged around 50, their children, an around one-year-old infant, an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, and two grown-up daughters aged 20‒24. An old woman with snow-white hair was holding the one-year-old in her arms, humming and entertaining it. And the infant was laughing, clearly pleased. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the perhaps ten-year-old boy by the hand and telling him something very quietly. Tears were welling up in the boy’s eyes. His father pointed to the sky, then stroked the boy’s head and seemed to be explaining something to him.

Suddenly one of the SS men standing over the ditch shouted to his colleague. The latter quickly counted twenty people and ordered them to line up behind the mound of dug up earth. The family I had been observing were among them. I remember perfectly a slender, dark-haired girl pointing to herself and saying to me as she passed: ‘I’m twenty-three years old.’

I then went around the mound of dug up earth and stood over a massive grave. The bodies of people were lying arranged one next to the other and in layers, so that you could only see their heads. Almost all their shoulders were bathed in blood flowing from the skulls. Some of those shot still showed signs of life. Some raised their arms and moved their heads to show that they were still alive. The deep pit was already two thirds filled with bodies. In my opinion, there were approximately a thousand corpses. I looked around to see the one who had shot all these people. It was an SS man. He was sitting at the higher end of the trench, feet dangling down into it. Resting on his lap was a submachine gun and he was smoking a cigarette.

The stripped naked people descended into the trench down a few steps carved into its clay wall and walking on the heads of earlier victims, moved towards spot where the SS man pointed. Next they lay down on the bodies of the dead and wounded. Some embraced others who were still alive, whispering something into their ear. Then I heard the shots being fired. I looked down and saw the bodies, some still twitching and others already dead, lying on the bodies of those who had been shot before them.

The next group was already approaching. They descended into the trench and lay down on top of the bodies of those who had just been shot, to also be killed. When I went back around the earth ridge, I saw a new transport had just arrived. This time it included the sick and infirm. Naked people were undressing an old, terribly thin woman who was being held up by others. The woman was probably paralysed. The naked people took her around to the other side of the earth mound. Together with Mönnikes we left and drove back to Dubno.