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Timofievitch says:
In November 1942, when the Jews began to flee from the Brest ghetto, I received an order to catch them. One time we murdered 47 Jews, the majority of them women and children. I personally murdered 8 women and children. Before that, we stripped them, and while being yet alive, we laid them in rows in the graves and shot them in the back of their necks. Prior to that, in Motikalsk [Motikala] I shot 6 women and 1 Jewish man. A second Jew was murdered by another policeman who served under my command, a Pole by the name of Z'okovski Felix. He murdered by gunfire so many Jews and other citizens that it's impossible to count. He even wanted to murder his Jewish wife but I forbade him. When driving the Jews on the road he constantly shot the weak and sick on the sides of the road. I estimate that he shot to death about 120 people.
Dov Bar: The village Motikala --where the German Gendarmerie was stationed under the command of Timofievitch-- was notorious for the anti-Semitism of its inhabitants. Jews hardly ever set foot in the town. Motikala is about ten km north-west of Brest. The road to Volchin and to the neighboring forests passed through this village.
After the Jews of the ghettos of Brest were sent to their death in Brona Gora, in October 1942, the few Jews who were in hiding began to come out from their various hiding places. They made their way to the forests around Volchin, using the road that passed through Motikala. Very few fled southward to the Muchavetz River. In his testimony, Timofievitch indicates there were two separate breakouts, with a total of about 55 fugitives, a large number of whom he murdered with his own hands.
Before the testimony of Timofievitch was known, people of Brest told the story that the villagers of Motikala ambushed the fugitives of the ghetto, caught them, and them over to the police of Motikala. The police executed them and buried them in a deep pit so they would not be found. As mentioned above, their number was 500.
When we were in Belarus in June 1997, some of us visited the edge of the cemetery of Motikala to see the rocky headstone. On the plaque the inscription reads: Here 500 citizens were murdered by the hands of the fascists…
The number 500 is almost ten times higher than the number of victims cited by Timofievitch. In my opinion, Timofievitch's count is not so far from the actual number. I compare it to what he said in his testimony about Volchin. His count and the number engraved on the headstone in Volchin match closely.
The number of victims that he cited in Volchin is close to the number engraved on the headstone on the mass grave in Volchin. I discussed the matter with Gershon Lev, chairman of the descendents of Brest, a lawyer by profession and very careful with words. His opinion: the Soviets, when the war was over, purposely exaggerated the numbers ofvictims. They prepared to receive as much compensation as possible in due course.
As regards Z'ukovksy Felix who is described by Timofievitch as a wholesale murderer who murdered about 120 weak and sick people on the road side: This number, in my opinion, includes other killings, not of the fugitives of the ghetto. Survivors of the Brest ghetto say that every so often the Nazis took men from the occupants of the ghetto for “work missions”. These men did not return to the ghetto and almost certainly were murdered. The policemen of Motikala, not far from Brest, were the most available people to carry out these murders.
