The Germans entered David-Horodok on July 5, 1941. The first significant action they took was the destruction of 3,000 Jewish men and boys. On August 10, 1941, the 17th of Av, 5701 on the Hebrew calendar, the Horodtchukas, David-Horodok Christians of Tartar descent, collected all Jewish males over the age of eight in the marketplace across from the Catholic Church. Then, with the SS, they marched the men out of town to mass graves prepared east of David-Horodok on the road to Chinovsk and Olshan. There, the men and boys, surrounded by SS Einsatzgruppen troops, were machine-gunned and buried.
Later that afternoon, as the rain fell, all the Jewish women and children were forced out of town to wander for two to three weeks under the control of Horodtchuka guards. Meanwhile, their homes and possessions were plundered. Many of the older women died, while a few of the women escaped to other shtetls where they had relatives. Most, however, were returned to David-Horodok where they were put into a ghetto surrounded by barbed wire. There, forced to work for the Germans, many died of maltreatment and starvation.
On September 10, 1942, the day before Rosh Hashanah and the 28th of Elul, 5702 on the Hebrew calendar, the remaining 1,100 women and children were marched out to the same place the men had been shot and were murdered by the guns of German SS Police Battalion 309. This ended the close to 500-year existence of the Jewish community in David-Horodok.
Let us remember and honor the memories of our families and landsmen who perished in the Holocaust.