Transport from Krasnobrod, Zamosc, Lublin, Poland to Belzec, Extermination Camp, Poland on 23/05/1942

In 1921, some 1,148 Jews lived in Krasnobród, slightly more than 50 percent of the total population of the townlet.^[1] Located in southeastern Poland, the townlet of Krasnobród was the seat of the Krasnobród gmina (municipality) and is about 25 kilometers from the town of Zamość. On September 13, 1939, Rosh HaShana (Jewish New Year) eve, German army units entered Krasnobród with heavy bombardment and set massive fires to the houses. Under German occupation, the townlet belonged to Zamość County, in the Lublin District of the General Government.

According to a 1939 registration of Jewish communities in the Zamość County, 725 Jews lived in Krasnobród, among them 113 children under the age of ten.^[2] According to Pinkas HaKehilot, 198 Jews were known to have vanished from Krasnobród at the beginning of the war^[3], and many others fled to neighboring places, such as Komarów and Zamość.^[4] Others left the townlet with the withdrawing Red Army, after a brief period of Soviet occupation.^[5]

When the Germans reentered Krasnobród, in the middle of October 1939,^[6] they immediately imposed forced labor upon the Jewish residents. For example, some were coerced to build an airfield near Zamość.^[7] A Jewish resident of Krasnobród, Moshe Knebel, described the extensive violence and looting of Jewish property in his hometown in a video testimony given to Yad Vashem.^[8]...