In the 1930s, Tuchyn was a shtetl, a predominantly Jewish town in what was first Poland, then the Soviet Union. About two-thirds of the people were Jewish, and they lived alongside Ukrainians and Poles. Rich farmland surrounded the town, which had a central market.
In 1933, thousands of miles away in Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. They persecuted Jews and in 1939, Germany launched World War II.
Click below to learn about the life of people in Tuchyn before the war.