Transport from Biszcza, Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland to Tarnogrod, Ghetto, Poland on 09/1942

Biszcza is a village and the seat of a municipality (gmina), located about 10 kilometers from the town of Biłgoraj in southeastern Poland. During World War II it was part of Biłgoraj County, within the Lublin District of the occupied part of Poland not formally annexed to the Reich, called the General Government (Generalgouvernement). In 1921, its population stood at 5,093, with 223 Jews among them. The majority – 175 Jews – lived in Biszcza,^[1] and the others in the neighboring villages: thirty-one in Gózd Lipiński, thirteen in Żary and four in Biska Wólka.^[2] In 1939, 205 Jews lived in the villages of the gmina, and 180 in 1942.^[3]

German forces entered the area on September 14, 1939, followed ten days later by the Red Army.^[4] On October 5, 1939, the Germans reoccupied the area. Jan Kuliński, a local Pole, recalled the persecution experienced by his Jewish neighbors: "When the Red Army left, the Germans returned immediately and then it all began. The Germans and local Ukrainians came to harass this [Silberzweig/Zylbercweig] family very often. They vandalized their shop, demanded everything. They designated the members of this family for [forced] labor, they had to dig ditches."^[5] We do not have full details of deportations from Biszcza to labor camps, but according to one transport list, Srul Kryskner (born 1877), from Biszcza, was among the Jewish men at a collection point for forced labor in the town of Biłgoraj.^[6]

At the beginning of May 1942, Lublin’s Population and Welfare Department (Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge Abteilung), a unit of the Kraków-based civil administration of the General Government, headed by Richard Türk, instructed the county governors to prepare for the deportation of all the Jews in the district.^[7] Those living in the county’s small villages were moved to larger towns, in order to concentrate the communities for further mass deportations, usually to the Bełżec (Belzec) death camp.^[8]...