Lublin, Poland

The Polish city of Lublin, that was home to nearly 40,000 Jews during the interwar period, was occupied by German forces on 18 September 1939. In late 1939 and early 1940, Lublin was flooded with thousands of refugees from areas in western Poland that had been annexed to the Reich. The city served as a way station for the deportees prior to their dispersal among localities in Lublin District. In December 1939, about 5,000 refugees from Lodz, Sieradz, Kalisz and other localities in western and central Poland could be found in Lublin. By January 1940, the number of Jews in the city had risen to approximately 40,500. Another 1,200 deportees from Stettin in Germany arrived in February 1940, but most were swiftly sent on to nearby localities. Several refugees died each day owing to poor sanitation and particularly harsh winter. Some 2,400 Jewish refugees were housed in forty-three hostels opened by the community leadership, and several soup kitchens operated in the city. Following the occupation, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Judenrat. On January 1940, a Judenrat was established under the leadership of Henryk Bekker. In late 1940 or early 1941 a ten-member Jewish Order Service was established in Lublin. Thousands of Jews in Lublin worked in three labor camps within the city and in dozens of labor camps in other areas. In early 1940, thousands of Jewish war prisoners who had served in the Polish army were interned in one of these camps. On 24 March 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in the Jewish quarter of Lublin. Within a few weeks, all Polish residents had been evicted from the designated area that now contained all Jews of Lublin. When the ghetto was sealed on 24 April 1941, the Judenrat counted its population at 34,149. The ghetto was sealed with a barbed-wire fence in the winter of 1941/42. Congestion, hunger and poor sanitation caused a typhus epidemic that claimed more than 1,000 lives between June 1941 and March 1942. The Jews of Lublin were the first of some 2,000,000 Jews murdered in Operation Reinhardt, under the command of Odilo Globocnik. In February 1942, initial preparations for the deportation were made. On the night of 16-17 March 1942, SS officers Hermann Hoefle and Hermann Worthoff informed the heads of the Judenrat that, starting on 17 March, 1,400 Jews would be deported each day for what they claimed was labor in the east. That night, SS men and Ukranians encircled the ghetto. The deportations began the following day. Their destination was the Belzec camp, where the Jews of Lublin were the first to be murdered. On 31 March 1942, after a two-day moratorium, the Germans returned to the ghetto and banished (among others) most members of the Judenrat. The same day, they replaced the murdered individuals with a new Judenrat under Dr. Mark Alten. In all, about 30,000 Jews were deported from the Lublin ghetto to Belzec between March 17 and April 14 1942, and more than 2,000 additional inhabitants of the ghetto were murdered in and near Lublin by SS men together with German and Ukranian police. On 14 April 1942, the 7,000 to 8,000 Jews who remained in the ghetto were relocated to Majdan-Tatarski, a suburb in the industrial area on the outskirts of the city, about two kilometers from Majdanek. About 4,000 of them were deported to Majdanek. Most of the deportees were murdered the very next day in the Krepiec forest. The Majdan Tatarski ghetto was liquidated on 9 November 1942. The ill, the elderly and the children were murdered; young adults were taken away for labor. Immediately after 9 November, the Germans embarked on a manhunt for Jews who had gone into hiding in the ghetto area, and any such person apprehended was murdered on sight. In May 1943, the Germans liquidated most of the small labor camps that still operated in Lublin (ranging in size from small workshops to the citadel prison, where about 300 Jews were employed) and deported their Jewish inmates to Majdanek. On 3 November 1943, most survivors from the Lublin ghetto were murdered in Majdanek as part of Aktion Enrtefest (Operation Harvest Festival), the murder of most of the remaining Jews in Lublin district. On 19-22 July 1944, several days before the Soviets liberated Lublin, the Germans murdered 1,600 people in Majdanek and at the citadel prison in Lublin, including many Jews.