Transport from Jozefow, Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland to Babia Dolina, quarry, Murder Site, Poland on 21/09/1942

Józefów is a village in Bilgoraj County in southeastern Poland, approximately 30 km from Bilgoraj and 110 km from Lublin. It belonged to Lublin Voivodeship before WW2. The village, part of a vast rural area had a poor infrastructure: no electricity, no hospital and no rail station. It numbered approximately 2,000 Jews or 60% out of 3,330 citizens at the eve of the war. The Wehrmacht occupied  Józefów on September 17, 1939 after heavily bombarding and destroying its center. On October 26, 1939 Józefów became part of the Kreishauptmannschaft Bilgoraj (county) in the District of Lublin of the newly created Generalgouvernement (General Government).

The Germans didn’t establish a ghetto but formed a Judenrat (Jewish Council) which was headed by Baruch Goldsztajn and the local pre-war rabbi Szymon Parzenczewski. Most of the Jews were concentrated in a narrow street called Ogrodowa (Garden Street).^[1] The living conditions drastically changed when on March 18, 1941, about 1,100 Jews were resettled from Konin in the Warthegau. These Jews, among them many elderly and sick, arrived with barely any possessions and were forced into already overcrowded houses of the local Jewish inhabitants. Due to the deteriorating sanitary conditions, a typhus epidemic subsequently broke out. In mid-1941, the Judenrat counted 2,147 Jews.

The first deportation  on May 1, 1942 was directed against 20 to 35 Jews from Józefów who were accused of being communists.^[2] The second deportation was implemented on May 11.^[3]...