Pinkas Hakehillot Polin: Szact, Ukraine

“Szact” - Encyclopedia of Jewish
Communities in Poland, Volume V
(Shatsk, Ukraine)
51°30' 23°57'

Translation of “Szact” chapter from
Pinkas Hakehillot Polin

Published by Yad Vashem Published in Jerusalem

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for permission to put this material on the JewishGen web site.

Translation submitted to the Yizkor Book Project for the
Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP, an activity of the
Kremenets District Research Group

This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot:
Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume V, page 206,
edited by Shmuel Spector, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

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[Page 206]

Szact
A village in Lyuboml district
by Avraham Kleban

Translated by Thia Persoff

In the census taken in 1921, there were 238 Jews among the 1,752 citizens of Shatsk.

During the 1930s, the number of Jewish families increased to about 200. Their occupations were in small businesses and crafts. Many had small farms.

In the 1929 elections for the 16th Zionist Congress, 6 persons voted, 5 for the General Zionists and 1 for the Time to Build party.

The Germans entered Shatsk on June 25, 1941. After a while, they moved more Jews out of the area. They established a sort of labor camp containing about 700 Jews and surrounded by barbed wire. During the work, German and Ukrainian guards abused them sadistically, and each day some were killed, mostly beaten to death.

In mid-August 1942, 80 young men were taken out of the camp. They were told that they had to dig potato storage pits, but in reality they were burial pits; as soon as they finished digging, they were shot to death. After them, adults were removed, and the children tied together. When the shots were heard, those who remained realized what was happening, and a mass escape began. Many were shot while running away, but 50 people managed to escape and reach the forest. The young ones organized a fighting troop, which for some time worked with a Soviet partisan troop made up of escaped prisoners of war. Those who did not fight gathered into a sort of family camp, but in early 1943, the Germans discovered their hiding place by following footprints in the snow. They were all murdered. In mid-1943, the young people with the Soviet troop joined General Oleksiy Fedorov's Volhynia Soviet brigade.

The Red Army liberated Shatsk on July 21, 1944.

Sources

AYV”Sh, M-1/E-650.
Sh. Spektor, The Holocaust of Volin's Jews, 1941-1944, Jerusalem.

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