On August 19, 1942 German and Ukrainian auxiliary police surrounded the ghetto of the old town, where shortly before this several thousand working Jews and their families had been resettled from the ghetto in the new city. The Jewish workers and their families were also collected at the Market Square on Brisk Street and then taken, under the guard of Ukrainian auxiliary police, by truck and then by train to the Bachów murder site, where they were shot to death by an SD unit. These two murder operations were headed and carried out by the Gebietskommissar of Kowel Erich Kassner, the head of Kowel's regional order police (Gendarmerie) Philipp Rapp, and the head of the Kowel German urban police (Schutzpolizei) Fritz Manthei. Afterwards the Germans put signs saying "Beware Mines!" around the murder site in order to prevent the local population from approaching it.