Kolomyia is a city on the Prut River in western Ukraine. Prior to World War II, Kolomyia was in Poland, and had a Jewish population of about 15,000 people. After the outbreak of war, the Soviet Union occupied Kolomyia and permitted thousands of Jews from German-occupied areas of Poland to take refuge in the city.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Jews of Kolomyia were savagely attacked by local nationalists. The German-allied Hungarian Army occupied the region and intervened on behalf of the Jews, but the German Army took control in August. In the following months, German Einsatzgruppen officers and Ukrainian police rounded up and shot more than 4,000 Jews in Kolomyia. In March 1942, the Germans established a ghetto for the remaining 18,000 Jews, who gradually died of starvation, disease, or executions, or were deported to the Belzec death camp. The Kolomyia Ghetto was ultimately emptied on February 2, 1943, when the last 2,000 Jews were shot and buried in the forests surrounding the town.
