Kamien Koszyrski

Jews are first mentioned as residing in this location in the mid-16th century. In 1897, under the Russian Empire, 1,189 Jews lived there. In 1921, during the Russian civil war, troops of the Belarusian nationalist Bulak-Balakhovich carried out a pogrom in the town, murdering 120 Jews; many Jews fled the town. After World War I Kamień Koszyrski was incorporated into the independent Polish state. During the interwar period about 1,700 Jews lived in Kamień Koszyrski, where they comprised approximately one-third of the town's population. Most local Jews were petty merchants, peddlers, or artisans. Zionist youth movements (Hashomer Hatzair, Hehalutz, Beitar) and parties (Mizrahi and Poalei Zion) were active and many children attended the Tarbut Hebrew-language Zionist school. In September 1939, with the arrival of the Red Army in the town following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Kamień Koszyrski became part of Soviet Ukraine. Under early Soviet rule businesses were nationalized and all independent and public political organizations were banned. The Tarbut school was reorginized into a Soviet Yiddish school. When the Soviets left on June 26, 1941, local Ukrainians looted Jewish property and killed two Jews. The Germans occupieded Kamień Koszyrski on June 29, 1941. On August 2, 1941 an SS cavalry brigade murdered eight Jews whose names appeared on lists that had been compiled by the local Ukrainian authorities. On August 22, 1941 a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C shot to death about 80 Jewish men, including the first head of the provisional Jewish council (Judenrat), Shmul Verbale, in the forest outside the town. In the summer and fall of 1941 the German authorities imposed a series of anti-Jewish measures, including the requirement of wearing an armband bearing the Star of David (replaced later by a yellow patch on their clothes) and harsh forced labor. Among the new regulations was the requirement that the Jews hand over all valuables and pay "contributions," which were collected by the Judenrat and transferred to Gebietskommissar (regional commissar) Fritz Michaelis. The Judenrat of Kamien Koszyrski, appointed in early October 1941, established a soup kitchen for the poor. On June 1, 1942, on the orders of the Gebietskommissar, a ghetto, surrounded by a two-meter high fence topped with a barbed wire, was set up in the town. Jews from the nearby villages of Pniewno, Wielka Hłusza, and other locations were also incarcerated in the ghetto (thus increasing its Jewish population to over 3,000). The ghetto was guarded by Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. In the summer of 1942 the Gebietskommissar and other German officials occasionally entered the ghetto and shot Jews arbitrarily, on the street or in their homes. On August 10, 1942 the inmates of the ghetto were taken to the Jewish cemetery outside the town, where a selection was carried out. About several hundred, mostly young, people who were selected as "useful workers," were left alive in the Kamień Koszyrski ghetto, which was reduced in size. The rest were shot to death near the cemetery by a German unit. On November 2, 1942 several hundred Jews managed to escape from the ghetto. However, most of them did not survive long: some perished in the woods of starvation or disease, while others were turned in by local peasants. Only a few managed to join Soviet partisan units. On the same day the remaining Jews of the ghetto were shot to death at the Jewish cemetery outside the town. Kamień Koszyrski was liberated by the Red Army on April 16, 1944.