Klesow

Jews were permitted to settle in Klesów by the end of the 19th century, following the construction of the Kiev-Sarny-Kowel railway line in the vicinity of the village. After World War I, Klesów was incorporated into the Second Polish Republic. According to the 1921 census, there were 142 Jews in the village. They worked in quarries and at a sawmill. Most of the local Jewish residents belonged to Zionist pioneer training communes. The graduates of these communes later immigrated to the Land of Israel. By the late 1930s, Klesów was home to some 700 Jews, including the members of a HeHalutz kibbutz that was based there. After September 17, 1939, in the aftermath of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the area was taken over by the Red Army, and Klesów became part of Soviet Ukraine. The Germans occupied Klesów on July 9, 1941. In the summer and fall of 1941, the local German authorities introduced a number of anti-Jewish decrees. Jews were required to wear distinctive markings (initially in the form of a Star of David, later changed to a yellow circle); they had to mark their homes with a blue six-pointed star; they were forced to perform forced labor, prohibited from leaving the town borders, and forbidden to buy goods from non-Jews. In addition, the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police subjected the Jews to systematic beatings and robberies. On July 25, 1942, the Germans established an open ghetto in Klesów, and Jews from the town and the outlying villages were forcibly resettled there. On August 26, 1942, the Klesów Ghetto was liquidated, and its inmates were loaded onto a train and deported to Sarny. Prior to the departure of the train, a number of Jews who were deemed too ill or infirm were murdered at the Klesów railway station. The remaining inmates, who numbered about 580, were taken to the Poleska camp in Sarny. It is likely that the group taken to Sarny included some 150 Jews from the village of Tomaszgorod, which lay in the Klesów County. On August 28, 1942, following the mass escape from the Poleska camp (with some of the new arrivals among the escapees), the Jews of Klesów were shot, together with those of Sarny, Rokitno, Dąbrowica, Bereżnica, and Tomaszgorod. The shooting took place in the Tutowicze Forest near Sarny. Over the next few days, the police also arrested and shot some 15 or 30 Jews who had been hiding in and around the ghetto on the outskirts of the town. Klesów was liberated by the Red Army on January 7, 1944.