Derazne

Jews began to settle in Deraźne in the early 17th Century. In 1897, the town was home to 770 Jews, who made up about 51 percent of the total population. In the aftermath of World War I, Deraźne was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. In 1921, there were 624 Jews in the town, comprising 89 percent of its population. In the interwar period, the Jews of Deraźne made their living from trade and petty industry, owning several flour mills and a brick factory. Most Zionist parties had branches in Deraźne. The town had a Zionist, Hebrew-language Tarbut school and a Jewish public library. In September 1939, the Red Army entered the town following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and Deraźne became part of Soviet Ukraine. Private businesses were nationalized, and all Jewish institutions and organizations were forced to disband. The Germans occupied the town on July 2, 1941. In the summer and fall of 1941, the German occupying authorities introduced a series of anti-Jewish measures. The Jews of Deraźne were required to wear the Star of David; they were forced to perform hard labor and forbidden to leave the town without permission. The German authorities also decreed the establishment of a Judenrat (Jewish Council). On October 5, 1941, the Germans set up an unfenced ghetto in Deraźne, and Jews from the town itself and from nearby villages were concentrated there. The total number of inmates was about 1,000. In May 1942, most of the able-bodied men were sent to forced labor in work camps outside the ghetto, and its remaining population consisted mostly of women, children, and elderly people. On August 24, 1942, the ghetto was liquidated, and its inmates – the Jews of Deraźne and those of the nearby village of Osowa Wyszka – were shot by an SD unit in an area near Kostopol. Jews from the nearby town of Stepań were also murdered at that site around the same time. In fall 1942, the Ukrainian police and the German Gendarmerie caught 152 Jews who had been hiding and shot them outside Deraźne, in the Bechalskyi Forest. Deraźne was liberated by the Red Army on February 5, 1944.