Transport from Szczebrzeszyn, Zamosc, Lublin, Poland to Belzec, Extermination Camp, Poland on 08/08/1942

"Three "deportations" took place in the city.…As we lay in our bunker, we were witnesses to these events, we heard them," Yitzhak Stemmer wrote about the deportations from his home town, Szczebrzeszyn. The town was located near the eastern border of Biłgoraj County in the Lublin District and was home to 2,964 Jewish inhabitants at the outbreak of World War II. After the withdrawal of the Red Army in October 1939, many Jews fled eastward from Szczebrzeszyn across the River Bug (the boundary established in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). The Jewish population grew with the arrival of refugees from various places in the Warthegau – the territory established by the Germans in October 1939 in the part of Poland that was incorporated into the Reich – and from the Lublin district. The Jews were deported to forced labor camps, to killing sites in the area and to the Bełżec death camp, which was located about 60 kilometers southeast of the town. There were three transports from Szczebrzeszyn to Bełżec, all in 1942: in May, on August 8 and, lastly, on October 21. ...