Lyuban

The origins of the Jewish community in Lyuban date back to the beginning of the 19th century. In 1897 766 Jews lived in Lyuban. In May 1921 there was a pogrom there in which 30 Jews were killed.

In 1939 Luban's 1077 Jews comprised 35 percent of the total population. German troops occupied Lyuban on July 29-30, 1941. Soon afterwards 200 Jewish men were murdered in the Kostukovskii Forest. After this murder operation, in mid-August a ghetto was established, where Jews from the area and children from mixed marriages were incarcerated. The ghetto had both a wooden fence and barbed wire. The Germans formed a Jewish council, which was was headed by Borukh Molin. Under the German occupiers a Jewish Order Police force also operated in Lyuban. On the night of November 6-7, 1941 the Ponomarenko partisan group attacked the local police station and killed several dozen policemen and the German-appointed mayor. In retaliation the Nazis murdered fifty Jewish men in the garden of the local executive committee office.

On December 12, 1941 all the remaining 700 Lyuban Jews were murdered at the local machine-tractor station. In 1943 the Germans opened the graves and burned the bodies of their victims in an effort to cover the traces of this crime.

The Red Army liberated Lyuban in June 1944.