Esmony

Jews lived in Esmony from the late 18th or early 19th century. At the end of the 19th century about 200 Jews lived in Esmony, comprising over 70 percent of the total population. Most Esmony Jews were artisans; others worked at the shoe sole factory founded by local Jews in 1897. The village had a wooden synagogue, which was closed down in the 1930s, and a mixed Jewish-non Jewish school. Many Jews worked in agriculture, including those who in the 1930s were members of the local Jewish kolkhoz. At the end of that decade the Jewish population was about 150, or more than half of the total population of Esmony. After the Wehrmacht and the Red Army both invaded Poland in September 1939, several families of Jewish refugees from Poland arrived in Esmony. The Germans occupied Esmony on July 6, 1941. The Jews were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David on their clothes. Between July 1941 and July 1942 Germans killed all the Jews of Esmony in a number of murder operations. Esmony was liberated by the Red Army on June 30, 1944.