Wołyń Voivodeship was overrun by the Wehrmacht in July 1941 during the German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland. The draconian restrictions on Polish Jews were imposed in August 1941. The Łuck Ghetto was set up in the capital by the German occupation authorities, and sealed from the outside in December 1941 with the provision of only starvation food rations.&lt;ref name="geni/Lutsk"&gt;Dr Pawel Goldstein, Lutsk (Luck) Ghetto. Geni.com. "In the spring of 1942 a group of young Jews attempted to escape from the ghetto to the forests, but most of them were caught and murdered by the Ukrainians. A few, however, managed to join the Soviet partisans and fought the Germans as part of the Kowpak units."&lt;/ref&gt; The Ghetto population was about 20,000 people. During a four-day period in mid August 1942 about 17,000 Jews were rounded up by Orpo and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and taken in lorries along with women and children to the Górka Połonka forest. They were shot in waves into the prepared trenches.