Krewo

The earliest documentary reference to the presence of Jews in Krewo dates to 1847. However, Jews had apparently lived there even earlier. In 1897, this town was home to 809 Jews, who made up 37 percent of its total population. Since the craftsmen of Krewo specialized in pottery, and later also in ceramics, the local Jews traded in these commodities, as well as in wood, flax, and grain, which were also sold in nearby towns.

During World War I, Krewo suffered extensive damage, and some of its Jews fled to Minsk and elsewhere. At the same time, the town experienced an influx of Jews from nearby Smorgonie, which had been virtually demolished in the fighting of 1915-1916. At the end of the war, there were approximately 550 Jews in Krewo. Most of them had to rely on aid provided by the JDC and other relief organizations.

In the interwar period, Krewo, as a small town within the reborn Polish Republic, experienced a degree of economic revival. Its houses were re-built; there were some new industrial enterprises, including a Jewish-owned soft drink factory and a modern flour mill. A Yiddish school was opened in 1919, followed by a Hebrew-language school of the Tarbut network. Some of the Jewish children attended a Polish state school.

In September 1939, World War II broke out, and Krewo was annexed to the USSR. At the end of June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the town was occupied by the Wehrmacht. Anti-Jewish regulations were enacted, and there were sporadic killings of individual Jews. The Jewish population had to perform forced labor. In October 1941, a ghetto was set up.

In January 1942, the Germans assembled the male Jews in the market square. The occupiers loaded the able-bodied men onto trucks and took them out of town. All traces of them were lost. In summer 1942, the young, able-bodied Jewish men and women of Krewo were deported to the Žiežmariai labor camp in Lithuania. According to German data, there were 447 Jews remaining in the Krewo Ghetto by the end of summer 1942. On October 23-24, 1942, the surviving Jews of Krewo, like those of the nearby towns of Smorgonie and Holszany before them, were transported to the Oszmiana Ghetto. Some of those taken to Oszmiana – the elderly, sick, and disabled, who were deemed unfit for work – were killed on October 24, 1942, at the former Ogleiba farm near the settlement of Tolminovo, west of Oszmiana. The Jews incarcerated in the Oszmiana Ghetto shared the fate of the local Jews.

Krewo was liberated by the Red Army on July 5-6, 1944. Only a few of the Jews transported to the Žiežmariai labor camp survived the war.