Transport from Potok Górny, Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland to Krzeszow, Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland on 12/09/1942

During the German occupation of Poland in World War II, the village of Potok Górny in southeastern Poland was the seat of the municipality (gmina) of Potok Górny in Biłgoraj County, Lublin District, within the General Government (Generalgouvernement, the zone of Nazi-occupied central Poland not formally annexed to the Reich). According to the 1921 census, 256 Jews lived in the municipality, mainly in three villages: Potok Górny (58), Kulno (90) and Lipiny Górne (55). The fifty-eight Jews of Potok Górny comprised 3.7 percent of the village’s 1,584 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were Poles and the rest Ukrainians. In 1941, the Jewish population of the Potok Górny municipality stood at 243 souls. Demographic data for 1942, when the community was deported, are not available. According to a local Jewish resident Moshe Sprung about twenty Jewish families resided in the village at the time. Another survivor, Moshe Sprung's brother, Shlomo-Yitzhak Sprung, recounts how on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in September 1942, the German authorities ordered the resettlement of the Jews in several locales, including ''Potok Górny, Kulno, Lipiny and Szyszków.'' The survivor testified that all the Jews of Potok Górny were loaded into horse-drawn wagons and transported to Krzeszów. Leokadia Zybura and Michał Grum, Polish residents of Potok Górny whose parents provided shelter to several Jews including Shlomo-Yitzhak Sprung, recall that all the Jews of the village and in other villages situated within the municipal area of Potok Górny, were forcefully relocated to Krzeszów. The latter would subsequently serve as an assembly point for deportation to the Bełżec death camp and to other nearby murder sites from November 2-13, 1942. They also recall that many Jews tried to flee from Krzeszów in search of shelter elsewhere. Moshe Sprung relates how he escaped into the Soviet-controlled area of Poland, while his parents and brothers remained in the village. After the war he found out that one of his brothers, Shlomo, hid in the woods during the deportation to Krzeszów but was caught by the locals and handed over to the Germans. He was taken to the municipal building of Potok Górny, from which he and twenty-seven other Jews who had fled and been caught were packed in a wagon and taken towards Jedlinki – some 5.5 kilometers northeast of Potok Górny – and in a field near the forest were all shot. Furthermore, a Polish municipal clerk from Potok Górny testified during Josef Bühler's trial that some forty Jews were captured in various hideouts on the municipal territory of Potok Górny and shot. In the meantime, the deportees to Krzeszów were forced into extremely crowded quarters. Two families had to share one room and up to seven Jewish families resided in one house. The Jews were concentrated in Krzeszów to facilitate the mass deportation from Krzeszów to the Bełżec death camp and to the “Chojniak” murder site. On November 2-4, 600-1,000 Jews, composed of Krzeszów Jews and of those who had been forcefully relocated to Krzeszów, including the community of Potok Górny, were transported to Bełżec and murdered. Following the roundup, at least two additional mass shootings of the remaining Jews from the Krzeszów area were conducted near the so-called “Chojniak” forest adjacent to the village of Kamionka, about 2-3 kilometers northwest of Krzeszów. Very few Jews from Potok Górny survived the deportations of November 1942. Shlomo-Izhak Sprung survived the roundup in Krzeszów, secretly returned to Potok Górny and found shelter with the Grum family until the liberation. Jan and Katarzyna Grum were awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1995.