Kunev

Jewish lived in Kunyev since the 18th century. In 1897 the Jewish population of 1,661 comprised 57 percent of the total. Under Soviet rule in 1926 1,314 Jews were living in Kunev out of a total of 2,776 residents. A three-year Yiddish elementary school operated in the town On July 3, 1941 the Germans occupied Kunev. From the first days the Jews were abused. For example, several old Jewish men were tied to a barrel and made to carry water, to spill it out, and then to fill the barrel again. Others were made to raise heavy logs during the building of a bridge from Kamenka to Ostrog; those who could not perform this hard physical work were severely beaten. Shortly after the occupation of the town its Jewish residents were ordered to wear yellow badges on their clothes. On August 4, 1941 159 Jews - men and women - as well as some children, from Kunev and the nearby village of Malyi Radohozh were shot to death at the Jewish cemetery of Kunev by an S.S. murder squad. Out of a group of Jewish artisans and craftsmen that had been left in the town, a few remained to work there while the rest were taken to the village of Pluzhnoye to work at local workshops. In 1942, apparently in June, those few Jews were shot to death, along with the Jews of Pluzhnoye, near the village of Storoniche. Kunev was liberated by the Red Army on January 1944.