Kalyus

Jews began to settle in Kalyus in the 17th century. A Jewish printing house was established there in the early 19th century. In 1897 there were 1,897 Jews, who amounted to 62 percent of the total population. In April 1920 Cossacks staged a pogrom, during which they looted Jewish property and raped Jewish women and girls. Under Soviet rule a Jewish council was active in the town, whose Jewish population in 1926 numbered 1,192 or 49 percent of the total population. A Yiddish school operated in the town until the late 1930s. The Germans entered Kalyus in mid-July 1941. According to one testimony, during the first days of the occupation Romanian soldiers arrived in the town and plundered Jewish houses and property. In August, on a Sabbath, Ukrainian auxiliary policemen took 10 Jewish men hostage and demanded that the Jewish community pay a ransom in gold. After this was done, the hostages were freed. Jewish men were taken to perform hard labor, such as road construction and cutting down trees. During the winter of 1941-1942 many, mainly elderly people and children, died from hunger, cold, and disease. Apparently in the spring of 1942, a ghetto was set up in the town. At the end of May 1942 a group of Jewish young people was taken to the Letichev labor camp. On August 20 1942 the Jews of Kalyus were shot to death outside of town by SD and Gendarmerie personnel. After the murder operation a small group of able-bodied Jewish men was returned to the ghetto and the next day sent to the labor camp in Letichev. Kalyus was liberated by the Red Army at the end of March 1944.