Voila the translation. I think this is probably one of the very first accounts of the Holocaust.
The Earth of Priyatin by Ilya Ehrenburg Published in Red Star, November 26 1943
On April 6, 1942, in the city of Priyatin in Poltova oblast, the Germans murdered six thousand Jews -- old men, women and children -- who had not been able to leave for the East.
"Why did the Germans kill these Jews?" is an idle question. In this very same Priyatin they have killed hundreds of Ukrainians. In the settement of Klukovko that killed two hundred Belarussians. In Grenoble, they kill Frenchmen, and in Crete, Greeks. Murdering the defenseless is the reason for their existence.
They led the Jews out on the Greben road. They led them up to Pirogovskaya levada, three kilometers from Priyatin. Pits (CD - "posmestitelnie yamy"; They latter word means "pits," and I don't know the first. I think this means "mass graves") had been prepared there. They undressed the Jews. The Germans and police then separated the women's and children's things. They drove them into the pit five people at a time and shot them with submachine guns.
I cannot make myself speak about the executions of nursing infants: I have no words to do it justice. I would now like to relate a story about the torment of Pyotr Levrentevich Chepurchenko. The Germans got him ready at 3 pm. Along with him, the Germans prepared over three hundred residents of Priyatin. They were given shovels. They saw the Germans murdering children. At 5 pm, an officer commanded: "Fill it in!" Cries and groans rose from the pit. Under a light layer of earth half-dead people were moving, and Chepurchenko says, "The earth was in motion..."
Suddenly Chepurchenko saw his neighbor and friend, the Jew Ruderman, a head of a felt factory, was rising from the earth. Ruderman's eyes were full of blood; he was all covered in blood. Ruderman was screaming, "Kill me!" From behind, someone cried in reponse, "Kill!" -- it was another acquaintance of Chepurchenko, the cabinetmaker Sima, wounded, but not dead. A dead woman lay by Chepurchenko's feet. A five-year-old boy climbed out from under her body and cried out, "Mommy!" Chepurchenko then fainted -- he saw and heard no more.
Pyotr Levrentevich Chepurchenko is alive, but his life is bitter: he cannot forget April 6, 1942. He says, "it was on the second day of Easter..." -- and falls silent. He looks into space, listening. What does he see? The boy, pulling at his murdered mother? The eyes of Ruderman? The Germans killed him, Chepurchenko, as well on that terrible day.
I would like to tell this to the soldiers of our motherland. When you see the Germans, remember the earth of Priyatin. Remember the five-year-old boy. You also have such sons and brothers. Your conscience will not let you rest while the despots are walking the earth. It is late to talk. It is late to be shocked. Now there is only one thing to do: kill these conscienceless and vile killers.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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