Kamin-Kashyrskyi

Kamin-Kashyrskyi (Камінь-Каширський) is a city in Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Kamin-Kashyrskyi Raion. Population:

Name
"Kamiń" means stone in Ukrainian. The second part of the name - Kashirskyi (Koshirskyi, Kosherskyi) - comes from the fact that the city was for some time owned by the princes Sangushki - Kosherskyi, who called themselves Kosherskyi after the name of their family nest Kosher. When the last of the Sangushki-Koshersky family, Adam-Olexandr, died without male heirs, the Krasytskyi, the new owners of Kamen, began to call it Kamen-Koshirsky to distinguish it from other settlements with that name.

M. Teodorovych writes in his book that on the site of modern Kamen - Kashirsky, there was a fortress for the northern protection of the borders of Volodymyr - Volhynia principality and it was called Kamen, and the town around it - Kosher. These names later merged.

The change of "o" to "a" in the word "Koshirsky" occurred as a result of Russification.

People/Ethnicity
The area has been historically a mix of Polish, Belarusians and Ukrainian peoples for more than a millennium. The region has been subject to a great many wars, pogroms, rulers and empires for centuries, including Habsburg, Polish Lithuania, Prussia, Poland, Russia, and German. It is now part of Ukraine. Major religions practiced include: Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Judaism. At the turn of the century, 1900, the area was reported to be populated by villages of Christian farmers and a few Jewish villages engaged in trade, as artisans and as professionals.

History
Great Soviet Russian Encyclopedia says "Kamen-Kashirskiy is on the river Zyr, a tributary of the River Prypiat the town was known already at the beginning of the 12th. Century. Situated in Wolyn."

The Encyclopaedia Judaica comments: "Kamen-Kashirskiy, a small town in Poland, the county of Polesia. In 1847 there were 862 Jews living there; in 1897 there were 1189 Jews (in a total of 1220 residents); in 1921 – 716 Jews."

It was part of Second Polish Republic between 1918 and 1939 was a powiat center in Polesie Voivodeship. During WWI, German soldiers sent postcards with photographs of the town and town life. They depict churches, dwellings, and town life. In 1917, German soldiers were in the town building a Feldbahn (or Lorenbahn) station. The Feldbahn were narrow-gauge field railways used for transporting goods (usually not open to the public).

Just prior to the outbreak of World War II on September I, 1939, it is estimated that more than 2000 Jewish people lived in the town. On August 1, 1941, a squadron of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arrived in the town from Ratno. One day later, they arrested and shot 8 Jewish men. On August 22, 1941, a detachment of the Security Police subordinated to Einsatzgruppe C arrested all Jewish males aged between 16 and 60. The next day, they shot 80 Jewish men in a forest 5 kilometers west of the town. In the fall of 1941, all Jewish people were ordered to inhabit an "open ghetto" but in March 1942, this ghetto, by the order of the Gebietskommissar, became an "enclosed ghetto". Altogether, 2 300 Jewish people resided in the ghetto area. The first mass action was perpetrated on August 10, 1942, by the German Security Police from Brzesc with the assistance of the local German Gendarmerie and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. Some 50 families were shot in the Jewish cemetery as well as 130 Romani people (previously known as Gypsies). On November 2, 1942, 400 Jewish people escaped from the ghetto. Most of the Kamin-Kashyrskyi Jews soon died of starvation or disease in the forest. The Towns as They Were in Their Time and Place