Img. ID: 153326
Name
No official name
Who is commemorated?
Jews of Kremenets murdered in the Holocaust
Description
A pyramid-shaped concrete monument is placed on a stepped base and bears a plaque inscribed in Russian. The inscription does not specify that the victims were Jewish.
Inscriptions
The Russian inscription on the older monument reads:
Здесь похоронены
тысячи невинных жертв погибших от
рук фашистских за-
хватчиков
1941-1944 г.
Translation: Here are buried thousands of innocent victims who perished at the hands of Fascist occupiers, 1941-1944.
Commissioned by
Jewish families from Kremenets
In the 1930s, there were around 7,000 Jews in Kremenets. With the beginning of World War II on September 1, 1939, the number of Jews increased since several thousand Jews from German-occupied Poland took refuge in Kremenets. After September 17, 1939, with the arrival of the Red Army in the city following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Kremenets became part of Soviet Ukraine. The Germans captured Kremenets on July 2 or 3, 1941. After the start of the German invasion, several hundred young Jews were able to flee to the Soviet Union.
The atrocities began in the first days of the German invasion with the pogrom and mass murders. On March 1, 1942, about 9,000 Jews were interned in a sealed ghetto. On August 10-11, the Kremenets ghetto was liquidated. Many of its inmates were shot to death, at the former WWI shooting range outside the town. The Jews of the nearby village of Berezce were also killed at the same murder site. Murders continued until October 1942.
In the 1950s, the memorial was erected at the place of mass murders in the former Yakutsk Regiment shooting range.