Kobryn

The earliest reference to the presence of Jews in Kobryń dates to 1511. However, some old tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in the town indicate that Jews may have lived there before 1503. According to the census of 1897, the local Jewish community had 6,738 members, constituting about 65 percent of the total population. In the aftermath of World War I, Kobryń was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. In the interwar period, there were about 5,600 Jews in the town, comprising more than half of its total population. Most local Jews were either petty merchants, chiefly in the food industry, or employees at factories producing food, clothes, candles, and bricks. Several of them had liberal professions. The Jews of Kobryń were assisted by the JDC, by relatives in North America, and by two Jewish savings-and-loan associations. The town had traditional Jewish charitable and welfare institutions, including an orphanage. Jewish educational establishments comprised two religious Hebrew-language schools, a Tarbut kindergarten, a non-Orthodox Hebrew-language school, a Hebrew-language high school, an ORT vocational school, and, until 1929, a TSYSHO Yiddish-language school. Kobryń also had two Zionist libraries, and a third library run by the Bund. Two Jewish weeklies were published in the town in the 1930s, for various periods of time. Political organizations in Kobryń included chapters of Zionist parties and youth movements, Agudath Israel, and the Bund, while the Jewish Communists engaged in clandestine activities. The Soviets occupied Kobryń on September 20, 1939. They Sovietizied the economy and imposed the Soviet curriculum on the Jewish schools, making Yiddish the language of instruction. A number of members of youth movements attempted to move to Vilna; several were caught and exiled to Siberia. German troops occupied Kobryn on June 23 or 24, 1941, and burned a section of the town. They rounded up Jews for forced labor and imposed a ransom in gold and valuables. The Jews were forced to wear Star-of-David armbands, which were replaced by two yellow badges in early September 1941. Jewish homes were marked. The Germans ordered the community to appoint a Judenrat; a Jewish Order Service was set up at a later date. The Jewish population of Kobryń was murdered in several operations on various scales. The first of these took place in July 1941. It was followed by a second operation, targeting sick and infirm Jews, a month later. The Kobryń Ghetto was established in November 1941. Jews from Białowieża and Hajnowka were brought to the ghetto, swelling its population to about 8,000 people. In early 1942, the ghetto was divided into two parts. Some skilled workers and their families were concentrated in Ghetto A, while the remainder of the inmates were housed in Ghetto B. Hundreds of youths were assigned to forced labor outside Kobryń, and were housed in special camps. About 100 inmates of Ghetto B worked at a knitting workshop, while the rest of the population performed assorted jobs. In April 1942, the ghettos were fenced off with barbed wire, and the supply of electricity to Jewish homes was cut off. In early 1942, a labor camp for hundreds of ghetto inmates was established outside the town. In midsummer 1942, the inmates of Ghetto B were shot in the Bronna Góra area, together with Jews from other locations. Ghetto A was liquidated in the third operation, carried out in mid-October 1942. In December 1943, the surviving 72 Jewish professionals, who had been held in the Kobryń prison, were murdered, as well, although the exact location of their murder site is unknown. Kobryń was liberated by the Red Army on July 20, 1944.