Jewish wartime dead reburied in Ukraine

GVOZDAVKA, Ukraine, June 15 (Reuters) The rabbi removed a small pile of human bones, one by one, from a cardboard box and placed them in a shallow grave in what was once a trench dug in vain by villagers to thwart the advance of Nazi tanks.

This, rabbi Shlomo Baksht said, was justice with dignity for Jewish victims of Nazi brutality whose remains were recently discovered in a post-Soviet Ukrainian village, one of dozens of sites of a systematic killing machine.

''I think the image of what we saw today will remain with me for the rest of my life,'' Baksht said after he and four other rabbis, dressed in traditional thick jackets and black hats, recited the kaddish prayer for the dead on a sunny hillside.

''Who could have imagined that we would see what we encountered today in just such a place?'' Human bones were dug up in Gvozdavka about a year ago, when the local authority extended gas pipelines into the village, 300 km (180 miles) south of Kiev and not far from the Black Sea port of Odessa, a traditional centre of Jewish culture.

Officials sought details on wartime events from archives in Moscow and found the Germans and their Romanian allies set up a concentration camp on marshland, now a woodworking plant.

''Everyone here knew very well there was a camp and everyone talked about it,'' said Mykhailo Panchenko, deputy head of the regional administration, who spearheaded the research. ''But no one knew exactly where it was and how it was made up.'' Data showed 4,772 inmates died in the 2 1/2 years the camp stood, most left to starve or succumb to disease. Accounts later detail shootings, with bodies removed and dumped in nearby pits.

Many came from other parts of Ukraine or from among the large Jewish population in nearby Moldova.

Parfeniy Bogopolsky, one of a handful of residents to remember the occupation, burst into tears outside his modest farmhouse as he recalled daily misery and death at the camp.

''The poor souls, they were all in a marsh. I was sent there with a cart and four bodies were loaded onto it. We took them off to a trench. Our villagers buried them with the others,'' Bogopolsky, now 85, told the visiting rabbis.

''What had they done wrong? Nothing at all. They all starved to death. Have you seen those trenches? No one does any field work there. Why should they? There are bodies there.'' RETRIBUTION Shielding Jewish neighbours was no easy option.

''People were afraid,'' he said. The Romanians went from house to house asking questions about anyone who might have been inside. People gave what they could - bread, potatoes, squash.'' Life today in Gvozdavka remains slow-moving, with little sign that the relative prosperity of consumer-oriented Kiev and other post-Soviet cities has filtered down to the district.

There is no running water, only wells. Women in kerchiefs drive one, or at most two, cows down dusty roads to pasture.

Those with business in nearby villages move about in horse-drawn carts.

After the latest discoveries, forensic experts examined the bones for age, sex and signs of violence. Recent rains uncovered new caches as authorities informed Jewish leaders in Odessa.

Six mass graves were already known and officials escorted the rabbis to newly-found sites of human remains. Agreement was reached to conduct further research and erect a monument to victims to complement a modest Soviet-era marker in a copse.

Jews had accounted for about half the population in the area, part of the Pale of Settlement to which they were confined in tsarist Russia. The holocaust and post-war mass emigration have reduced their numbers to a handful.

For historians, the discoveries underscored the systematic murder of Jews undertaken by ''Einsatzgruppe C'', one of four such Nazi units. And unlike better known cases like Babiy Yar, the Kiev ravine where more than 33,000 died in two days in September 1941, mass killings were routine in towns and villages.

''Each major town had a ghetto and its own Babiy Yar. This was the case in Odessa and in Lviv (western Ukraine),'' said Viktor Korol, history professor at Kiev's National University of Culture and Art.

''It was done secretly, at night. Hardly any witnesses were left alive. Historians and others want the truth established on this tragic episode.'' REUTERS AGL RK9855