שילוח מ - Dubeczno, Wlodawa, Lublin, פולין ל - Sobibor, מחנה השמדה, פולין ב- 23/10/1942

Dubeczno is a town in eastern Poland, in the municipality  gmina of Hańsk, some 18 km southwest of Włodawa. Following the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, the village was occupied by Soviet troops. However, it was ceded to Nazi Germany shortly thereafter. Some local Jews left with the Red Army and crossed over into Soviet territory.^[1] The number of Jews who remained in Dubeczno under the Nazi occupation is difficult to quantify.^[2] According to Pinkas Hakehillot, the majority of the local Jews left and a handful remained. These authors go on to claim that it was only after the arrival of a transport of some 100 Jews from the regions of Poznań and Pomerania in March 1941 that the number of Jews in Dubeczno grew again.^[3] However, according to historian Tatiana Berenstein, the Jewish population of the town stood at 648 in December 1941.^[4] It is difficult to verify these assessments. The JSS report from June 21, 1941 mentions the arrival of deportees from Kalisz, Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin. These new arrivals numbered forty families, and they began to live in Dubeczno alongside the local Jewish population.^[5]

The postwar People's Council of the Hańsk gmina reported two deportations of Jews from Dubeczno during the Holocaust: the first one to Sobibor in May 1942, and the second to the Włodawa Ghetto on October 23, 1942.^[6] A statement given by the People's Council of the Hańsk gmina on March 20, 1952 mentions the presence of only 120 Jews in Dubeczno at the time of the deportations (i.e., in May 1942).^[7] Local resident Yehoshua Sam Gorfenkel, together with his mother and siblings, was among the deportees on October 23, 1942. His father had been murdered earlier. He testified that all the Jews in the town had been ordered by the Germans to move out of their homes. They were then forced to walk, or ride in their own horse-drawn wagons, to Włodawa, some 20 kilometers northeast of Dubeczno. Gorfenkel describes their arrival in Włodawa at night, around the time of the grosse Aktion (large-scale deportation) in that town. Gorfenkel's family took shelter in a cellar and managed to stay undetected. However, many of the deportees from Dubeczno, including Yehoshua's uncle, were sent to Sobibor. Others managed to survive a while longer, but were deported to Sobibor in the subsequent transports, which took place in early November 1942 and on April 30, 1943, during the final liquidation of the Włodawa Ghetto.^[8]

Very few Jews survived the October deportation. Lola Elżbieta Lustgarten, originally from Krakow, testifies that she arrived in Dubeczno in 1942, after her father had died of typhus. She herself survived the deportations, but her mother was deported to Włodawa in October, and thence to Sobibor.^[9] Ruti Ben Shalom, a native of Dubeczno, also avoided the deportation. Her parents were sheltered by the priest in that town, while Ruti herself was hidden by local Polish peasants.^[10]...