Krymno

Jews were residing in Krymno at the beginning of 20th century, under the Russian Empire. In 1920, during the Russian civil war (1918-1922), forces of Stanislaw Bulak-Balachowicz carried out two pogroms in the village, killing 68 Jews. After World War I Krymno was incorporated into the independent Polish state. In the interwar period about 70 Jewish families lived in the village. Most of them were merchants, while others exported grain to different parts of Poland. In September 1939, with the arrival of the Red Army into the village following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Krymno became part of Soviet Ukraine. German troops occupied Krymno on June 29, 1941. In May 1942, on the orders of Arno Kampf, the Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) of Kowel, the Jews of Krymno, Lubosziny, and other nearby villages were confined to a ghetto that was guarded by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. A group of several dozen Jews with skills considered useful by the Germans were sent to the nearby village of Zabłocie. On September 6, 1942 the inmates of the ghetto, mainly women, children, and elderly people, were taken outside the village and shot to death. In January 1943 a group of skilled Jewish workers from Krymno was shot to death, along with Jews from Zabłocie and nearby localities, near the village of Tur. Krymno was liberated by the Red Army on April 16, 1944.