Zborow: Historical Background during the Holocaust

Zborow, Tarnopol district was part of eastern Poland before World War II and is today in Ukraine. The town was occupied by the Germans on 4 July 1941.

Like in the other territories conquered from the Soviet Union, the murder of the Zborow Jews began immediately. One thousand Jewish men were executed by shooting shortly after the occupation. Through the winter of 1941/42 the remaining Jews of Zborow suffered from disease and hunger, and in summer 1942, a year after the occupation, the killings resumed and 1,300 Jews were deported to Belzec and killed. The Jews of the towns and villages from the area were brought to Zborow and the ghetto was fenced off. On 9 April 1943, 2,300 Jews were rounded up, forced to dig their own graves and executed. Three months later, in June 1943, was the end of the Zborow community. All those remaining in the ghetto and in labor camps in the area were killed – 600 out of them were burned alive.