Wave of Deportation from Krychów, Camp, Poland to Sobibor, Extermination Camp, Poland on 05/1942

The Krychów camp^[1] in the Kreishauptmannschaft Cholm county, 33 km southeast of the Sobibor extermination camp, was part of the network of forced labor camps managed and operated by the Wasserwirtschaftsverwaltung (Waterworks Management) of the Lublin District.^[2] It became operational in the spring of 1940. The forced laborers, arriving in several deportation waves in 1940 and 1941, were used to drain the swamps in the area and rectify the flow of tributaries of the Bug River. In addition to Jews, the Krychów camp received various other groups of forced laborers, such as Sinti, Roma, and Poles. In early 1942, more and more of them were released.^[3]  With the onset of Operation Reinhard on March 17, 1942,^[4] all the remaining non-Jewish workers were supposed to be freed, and the camp be reserved for Jews.^[5] However, according to the recollections of the witness Józef Klauda, it was only on April 4 that most of the Poles detained at the Krychów camp were released.^[6]

The first known deportation from Krychów to Sobibor took place in mid-April 1942, during the so-called test runs, or experimental gassings, after the construction of the three gas chambers of the still unfinished camp. ^[7] The Jews from Krychów were murdered under the supervision of SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla and SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Paul Stangl, both from the Operation Reinhard staff of SS and Police Leader Odilo Globočnik in Lublin.^[8]

The next transports were carried out in May. Franz Holtzheimer, the former chief of the regional Wasserwirtschaftsverwaltung in Chelm, testified on August 25, 1965, during the investigation proceedings of the Zentrale Stelle in Ludwigsburg against Josef Napieralla, a former Krychów camp commandant, that the deportations had begun as soon as Sobibor became operational in May 1942. He specified that SD or SS forces from either Lublin or Chelm would "infrequently continue to order roll calls, and then select the sick and those deemed unfit for further work," for deportation by truck to the Sobibor extermination camp.^[9] Holtzheimer oversaw all the sixteen forced labor camps in the Kreishauptmannschaft Chelm county, and the camp commandants received their operational orders from him.^[10] Although he could not give specific deportation dates for May 1942, he was in the picture about what went on in these camps, and his testimony provides strong evidence for transports in May. Due to the lack of dates and numbers, it is difficult to suggest a reliable figure for the number of transports. However, since Krychow had a high input of forced laborers between April 1942 and June 1942, and since it was standard Nazi policy to deport and kill those who were too exhausted to continue working, we can assume that the SS organized frequent transports of the sick and weak throughout 1942, as part of Operation Reinhard. Such transports probably took place on a weekly (or, at least, biweekly) basis....