Transport from Tarnogrod, Ghetto, Poland to Belzec, Extermination Camp, Poland on 09/08/1942

Tarnogród is a town in Biłgoraj County, Lublin Province, in southeast Poland, about 106 kilometers due south of the city of Lublin.^[1] In August 1939, its 5,016 inhabitants included 2,515 Jews, who constituted 50 percent of the population.^[2]

The Germans occupied Tarnogród on September 15, 1939,^[3] before withdrawing some ten days later^[4] in the face of the advancing Soviet forces. On October 6, upon the conclusion of the German-Soviet border negotiations, the Red Army withdrew. The next day, Saturday morning, October 7, German troops retook the town.^[5]

The Germans appointed a local collaborationist administration, with Poles and Ukrainians recruited into the police. At the end of 1939 or in early 1940, the German authorities ordered the establishment of a Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Tarnogród, which was headed by Hersh Blutman, the prewar Jewish community leader.^[6] The Judenrat was tasked with providing Jews to be sent for forced labor.^[7] In April 1941, a German Gendarmerie unit was stationed in Tarnogród, under the command of Michael (Karl) Gerhard.^[8]...