Until the outbreak of World War II, the relations between the Jews and the local Gentile population which contained Byelorussians, Ukrainians but mostly Poles – had been generally good with the exception of Eastern Poland, especially the Wołyń area, where Jewish shopkeepers were ruthlessly chased out by the Ukrainian nationalists from some 3,000 villages. On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a Non-Aggression Pact, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol providing for the partition of Poland. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland and two weeks later, the Soviets invaded on September 17, 1939.