The Brest Ghetto or Brześć Litewski Ghetto was created on December 16, 1941, in occupied Poland six months after Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 entered the Soviet occupation zone

Soviet occupation of Poland

Soviet occupation of Poland can refer to*Period from 1939 to 1941 - see Occupation of East Poland by Soviet Union*Period from 1945-1989 - see Northern Group of Forces...

 under the codename Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa

Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...

. The Ghetto was liquidated in less than a year, on October 15–18, 1942, when most Jewish inhabitants of Brześć were executed; over 5,000 locally, the rest, after being sent in cattle trucks to a large killing site in the forested area near Góra Bronna .

Ghetto history

The town of Brest was overrun by the Red Army in September 1939 during the Soviet invasion of Poland

Soviet invasion of Poland

Soviet invasion of Poland can refer to:* the second phase of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 when Soviet armies marched on Warsaw, Poland* Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939 when Soviet Union allied with Nazi Germany attacked Second Polish Republic...

 and annexed by the Soviet Union following mock elections

Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus

Elections to the People's Assemblies of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which took place on October 22, 1939, were an attempt to legitimate territorial gains of the Soviet Union, at the expense of the Second Polish Republic...

.

The German armed forces invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, and six months later, on December 16, 1941, set up a Jewish ghetto in the city for some 18,000 Polish Jews who still resided there after a wave of ad hoc

Ad hoc

Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....

 executions. The mass killings of Jews in Brześć lasted already for months before the ghetto was set up. On July 10, 1941, the German Einsatzgruppe under SS-Obergruppenführer Eberhard Karl Schöngarth massacred 5,000 Jews including 13-year-old boys and the 70-year-old elderly men in a single nighttime raid. In January 1941, first underground resistance organizations were formed among Jews in the ghetto. In autumn 1942 the Germans demanded a large contribution (money, jewelry) from the Jews under the threat of liquidating the ghetto. Despite significant contribution worth 26 million rubles, the ghetto was liquidated soon afterwards. Most of the Jews were murdered over execution pits nearby.