Lutsk Ghetto

Łuck was in the eastern part of Poland throughout the interwar period. According to the Polish census of 1931, Jews constituted 48.5% of the Łuck's diverse multicultural population of 35,550 people. Łuck had the largest Jewish community in the province. The secret annex to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact meant that during the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 Łuck was conquered and occupied by the Red Army. The region was Sovietized in an atmosphere of terror. Political, communal and cultural institutions were shut down, and Jewish community leaders were arrested by the NKVD. Some 10,000 people were sent in cattle trains to Siberia in four waves of deportations from Łuck county beginning in February, April and June 1940. ==NKVD prisoner massacre==

The German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union on , in Operation Barbarossa. Many young Jews left Łuck with the retreating Red Army, The gates were locked, and all prisoners were mowed down by heavy machine guns and grenades thrown from prison windows; 2,000 people died on the spot. A small group of survivors was forced by the NKVD to bury the bodies over the next two days, in five mass graves. In total, some 4,000 captives including Poles, Jews and Ukrainians were murdered by the Soviet secret police before their withdrawal. The Germans rolled into the city on . They overlooked the Soviet killings of Poles and Jews. But the killings of Ukrainians were documented, and, by the Nazi ideology of Judeo-Bolshevism, the Jews were to be held responsible for what the Soviets did. The Ukrainian People's Militia vented their rage by organizing a pogrom. The Synagogue along with the Jewish homes were set on fire. The Nazi's wave of mass executions began a week later. A mobile killing squad, Einsatzgruppe C's Einsatzkommando 4a, assisted by an infantry platoon, massacred 1,160 Jews on . On at Lubart's Castle 3,000 Jews were shot and killed by heavy machine gun fire. Overall, some 2,000 Polish Jews were murdered by the SS-Sonderkommando 4a alone, as reprisal for the NKVD killings of Ukrainians (9.2 percent of population in 1931), even though Polish Jews had nothing to do with the Soviet atrocities. == Ghetto history ==

The draconian restrictions on Jews were imposed in August 1941. In October, a group of 500 Jewish carpenters and craftsmen (including 50 seamstresses) were moved to a new forced labour camp set up in the Jewish school building. Four soldiers from the SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger were sent there as sentries and one of them, SS-Oberscharführer Heinz Feiertag become the camp's first commandant. He personally fenced off the area and brought in the Jews from the ghetto to work as forced labors. The camp produced items such as: shoe polish, floor polish, soaps and brushes. A tailor's workshop was also set up in the camp.In just 2.5 months, the camp brought in a net income of 25,000 marks before the facility was taken over by the civilian administration. During a postwar proceeding, a Jewish witness who was one of the workers in the camp described Feiertag's criminal activities in the camp:"Feiertag visited the workshop several times a day. Not a day went by without him beating one of the workers. I remember exactly how once in the shoemakers’ workshop a pair of boots was made upon his order. Feiertag was very pleased with them. As proof of his delight, he commanded the foreman, the Jew Wydra, to be given 15–20 blows of the stick. Feiertag knew perfectly how to torment prisoners. There was no day that somebody did not get a thrashing. For the beatings, a stick was used on the naked body. Two SS men would carry out the beatings. They reveled in [torturing] the victim all day long. They called him [the prisoner] names, ordered him about, made him sing songs, and then they had him undress completely [and] dig himself a grave in the camp yard. The torture lasted several hours. In the end, they shot him."The Łuck Ghetto was established by the German occupation authorities in December 1941, The Jewish Ghetto Police was also organized by the Judenrat. Jewish uprising and the ghetto liquidation The fate of ghettoised Jews across occupied Poland was sealed at Wannsee in early 1942, when the Final Solution was set in motion. The first large-scale aktion in the Łuck Ghetto took place on . About 17,000 Jews were rounded up by Nazi Order Police battalions and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during a four-day period, on the outskirts of Łuck (see map). In total, more than 25,600 people were executed at point-blank range at Połonka, Several participants of the rebellion escaped to freedom. and Ostrowskis, Polish Righteous Among the Nations from Łuck and nearby farm in Kroszowiec respectively. The remaining Polish population was expelled and resettled back to new Poland before the end of 1946. The Jewish community was never restored. The USSR officially ceased to exist on 31 December 1991. == See also ==