Holocaust Massacre Victims Found in Ukraine Cellars

The remains of 286 Jews, Hy”d, who were massacred during the Holocaust, have been found in two basements in a town in southwest Ukraine.

The victims, mostly women and children, were herded into a cellar by Nazi troops and Ukrainian military police, who locked it after them. There they suffocated to death on May 15, 1942.

After World War II, the cellars were covered in rubble and an outdoor market operated over the area for many years, according to Ynet.

The remains were discovered only after a six-year legal battle fought by Rabbi Alexander Feingold, of the Khmelnytsky and Ternopil districts in Ukraine, to force the property owner to allow him to search the premises.

Some of the remains were found in 2019, the rest about two weeks ago. They had been left where they died in the cellars with a sign indicating that they were killed by the Nazis.

They will be buried in a mass grave in the ancient Jewish cemetery in Sataniv, Ynet said.

Rabbi Feingold said there are plans for a park to be established in memory of the victims near the site of the massacre.

The town had an organized Jewish community for some 500 years before the Nazis captured it in 1941 and began its systematic murders, according to the Yad Vashem website.