A pin in memory of the Jewish victims of the Steri ghetto, Poland. An uncommon pin. Diameter: 3 cm. 1941 - 1944

A pin in memory of the Jewish victims of the Steri ghetto, Poland. An uncommon pin. Diameter: 3 cm. 1941 - 1944
 Steri in the Holocaust

With the outbreak of World War II, the city was occupied by the Wehrmacht, but was later handed over to the Red Army, which banned Zionist and Bond activists.

On July 2, 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, the Germans occupied the city a second time, and shortly thereafter Ukrainians and local Poles staged a pogrom among the Jews of the settlement, in which approximately 300 people were murdered. Later, various decrees were imposed on the city's Jews, including movement restrictions, the obligation to wear an armband and conscription for forced labor, some in labor camps.

On September 16, 1941, an action was held in the city, in which between 800 and 1,000 Jews were taken from their homes, and after three days of abuse, they were murdered by German and Ukrainian policemen in a nearby forest. After that, the remaining 10,000 Jews of the city were concentrated in a very dense ghetto that was established there. Molika Turia Jews were also transferred to this ghetto.

On September 3, 1942, a three-day action began in the city's ghetto, in which about 3,000 Jews were sent in compressed freight cars to the Belzec extermination camp, along with about 2,000 Scola Jews. About 500 to 600 Jews were murdered during the action.

In the second half of September 1942, about 1,700 more Jews from the surrounding communities were transferred to the Steri ghetto, and on October 22, 1942, another, particularly brutal, action was held there, in which the Germans set fire to the houses of their occupants and flooded basements with water. About 2,300 Jews were murdered in this action. Several hundred were murdered on the spot, and the rest were sent to Belzec. After that, about 700 more Jews were brought to the ghetto in the city, its area was reduced, and epidemics broke out in it.

On November 15, 1942, another action was carried out in the city's ghetto, in which about 1,500 Jews were deported to Linowska and Belzec. Attempts by some of the ghetto residents to escape from it were in vain, after they were caught and murdered.

On February 28, 1943, another action began in the city's ghetto, lasting several days, in which about 1,000 Jews were murdered, while Jews who tried to escape were shot. On May 22, 1943, German and Ukrainian police officers carried out an extermination operation in the ghetto, in which approximately 1,000 Jews were imprisoned in the building of the city's largest synagogue, kept there for several days without food and drink, and from there they were taken to the local Jewish cemetery, where they were murdered.

On June 3, 1943, the Germans conducted a hunt for Jews hiding in the ruins of the ghetto, while burning houses, flooding basements and blowing up bunkers. In July and August 1943, the Jews who remained in the labor camps in the vicinity of Steri were also murdered.

Out of approximately 11,000 Steri Jews, only a few dozen survived the Holocaust.

From Wikipedia