Transport from Kolacze, Wlodawa, Lublin, Poland to Wlodawa, Wlodawa, Lublin, Poland on 22/10/1942

The village of Kołacze lies some 19 kilometers southwest of the town of Włodawa in Eastern Poland. According to the census of 1921, the village was home to only thirteen Jews, out of a total population of 341, two thirds of whom were Ukrainians, while the other third were Poles. The census also mentions a manor farm (folwark in Polish) named Kołacze, which had sixty residents, six of whom were Jews.^[1] The Jewish population of the village grew over the years, and, according to local Holocaust survivor Michael Knopfmacher (Kaftori), it numbered some 7-8 families on the eve of World War II. These families were large, and bound together by kinship ties. Michael's own family consisted of nine members, including seven children. As in other localities in the region, Jews from Kołacze moved into Soviet-controlled territory by crossing the Bug River, which had been fixed as the boundary between Soviet occupied and Germany occupied part of Poland. Michael's brother Nahum was one of those who crossed over and survived the war. The rest of Michael's family perished in the Holocaust.^[2]

The destruction of the Jewish community of Kołacze conformed to the general pattern that emerges from the research done on the Włodawa area. According to Michael Knopfmacher's testimony, in March 1942 the local Jews were ordered by the German authorities to leave their village and assemble in Włodawa. At the time, Michael was employed as a shepherd by a local non-Jew named Jurczuk, who had been appointed village headman (sołtys) by that point. Jurzcuk was instructed to submit a list of names of the local Jews to the German police, who used it to determine which persons were to be deported to Włodawa. Pninah Perlah Zigelman (née Knopfmacher) testifies that at this point the Jews saw notices on bulltein boards to the effect that within forty eight hours they had to move to Włodawa. Pninah recalls that it was on a Thursday evening (October 22, 1942) that they were leaving for Włodawa. She recalls also that her father even had to rent a cart and a horse for this move.The Jews packed their belongings, and loaded onto carts and moved to the Jewish quarter in Włodawa.^[3]

The deportees from Kołacze were housed in the restricted Jewish quarter in Włodawa, and they shared the bitter fate of the local Jews, and of all the other Jews who had been concentrated in that town. According to Yad Vashem's Hall of Names Database, dozens of Jews from Kołacze perished at the Sobibor extermination camp. The largest deportation from Włodawa to Sobibor took place on Saturday, October 24,1942, during which most of the Kołacze deportees were murdered.^[4] Some of the Jews from Kołacze, including Michael Knopfmacher's parents and siblings, were sent to work at the forced labor camp in Adampol, six kilometers east of Włodawa, and they survived a little longer. These Jews were murdered during the liquidation of the camp, in the summer and fall of 1943.^[5]...