Frampol

Jews began to settle in Frampol in the early 18th century. In 1793, the town was annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1897, it was home to 1,216 Jews, who made up ninety-eight percent of the total population. Under Soviet rule, local Jews worked at state-owned cooperatives and at the nearby collective farms, which were named "Trud" ("Labor") and "Krasnyi Put" ("The Red Path"). During the 1930s, a seven-year Yiddish school operated in the town. In 1926, Frampol had 1,160 Jewish residents, who comprised forty-six percent of the total population. The number of Jews in the town had declined markedly by the end of the 1930s. On July 8, 1941, Frampol was occupied by German troops. The local Jews were required to wear yellow Stars of David. Young Jewish men were sent to perform forced labor, mostly in road construction. Shortly after the beginning of the occupation, the Germans took ten prominent residents of the town hostage, in order to extort a ransom from the Jews. Since the Jews were unable to raise the required sum, the hostages were publicly hanged upon the orders of the local commandant. Afterward, a ghetto was set up on one of the town's streets. It was surrounded with barbed wire, and many of its inmates either starved to death or died from typhus and other diseases. In late October 1942, the Jews were driven out of their houses in the ghetto and taken to the military barracks near the Yarmolintsy railway station. After being held there for several days, during which some of the inmates tried to offer armed resistance, the Jews of Frampol – along with Jews from the nearby towns of Yarmolintsy, Gorodok, Mikhalpol, and Satanov – were shot dead at pits near the Yarmointsy railway station. Frampol was liberated by the Red Army in late March 1944. The town was subsequently renamed Kosogorka.