Kamieniec Litewski

Although individual Jewish families appear to have lived in Kamieniec Litewski as early as 1503, the beginnings of an organized Jewish community in the village date to the early 17th Century. The community grew, and in 1897 Kamieniec Litewski was home to 2,722 Jews, who made up 74 percent of the total population. In the interwar period, there were about 1,900 Jews in the town, comprising approximately 80 percent of the total population. Most of them were merchants, although a few were skilled artisans or small-scale farmers. The local Jewish economy was boosted by the services of the JDC, Jewish savings-and-loan associations, and a Jewish free-loan society. The town boasted a talmud torah, two yeshivot, three Jewish public libraries, and a drama group. Private tutors offered Hebrew lessons. Zionist parties and youth movements were active in the community. The Germans occupied the town in mid-September 1939, but they ceded it to the Red Army several days later. Following the establishment of Soviet rule in 1939, Jews were dismissed from municipal posts, and Jewish cultural life was suspended. The Germans occupied Kamieniec Litewski on June 22, 1941, and they began to loot Jewish property and abduct Jews for forced labor. Several Jews were shot in the streets of the town during the first days of the occupation. The only mass murder operation in Kamieniec Litewski itself was carried out in July 1941. In late 1941, about a third of the local Jews were sent to the Pruzana Ghetto. From there, they were deported to Auschwitz in early February 1943, and only three of them survived. Those who remained in the town were mostly skilled workers and their family members. The Kamieniec Litewski Ghetto was established on January 1, 1942. Initially open, it was sealed in April that year. Some 100 Jewish men were sent to a labor camp in Wolkowysk. Jews from nearby localities and Jewish farming communities were resettled in the ghetto, swelling its population to 450 families. The ghetto was liquidated on November 9, 1942, with its inmates being sent to the train station in Wysokie Litewskie and deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. Kamieniec Litewski was liberated on June 22, 1944.