On June 22, 1941, during Operation Barbarossa, German border guards shelled the town and then occupied it, setting up a military command post in the town. Adult Jews were employed in forced labor by the Germans. On 29 June 1941, following Sunday mass, local Polish anti-Semites carried out a pogrom killing 10 Jews and injuring dozens of others. Rumors circulated that the Poles received advance permission from the Germans, however most scholars believe this is not the case as the Germans halted the pogrom by shooting dead three of Polish perpetrators and took victims to a hospital. However the next day on 30 June the Jews of the town were assembled at the market square by the German Gestapo and the Polish perpetrators (acting as auxiliary police) of the pogrom were asked to identify communists who were then brutally beaten. A similar incident took place on 3 July. 300 Jews, alleged communists, were arrested and placed in the old Synagogue. Following the German unit departing, these Jews were tortured by the Poles for the next four weeks. The Germans executed the survivors in August.