שילוח מ - Rejowiec, Chelm, Lublin, פולין ל - Sobibor, מחנה השמדה, פולין ב- 09/08/1942

Rejowiec, a town some 55 kilometers east of Lublin, in the Chełm County of the Lublin District, was home to 2,500-2,600 Jews on the eve of World War II.^[1]

The Wehrmacht occupied the town in September 1939, after a brief interlude of Soviet rule.^[2] Dr. Warner Ansel was the County Governor between April 1 and December 1942, and he was the one responsible for planning and conducting the deportations.^[3] There was a Blue (Polish) police station in Rejowiec, but the nearest Gendarmerie and Grenzpolizei (Border Police) post was in the city of Chełm, 15 kilometers east. At that time, Franz Kubin was the commander of the office of the KdS branch (KdS Aussenstelle) in Chełm, which was known as the "Border Commissariat Cholm" (Grenzkommissariat Cholm), and his deputies were Erich Horn and Andreas Braumüller.^[4] Hugo Raschendorfer, Rudolf Theimer, and Rudolf Selch worked for the Department of Jewish Affairs at the Chełm branch of the Grenzpolizei.^[5] They, too, were responsible for conducting the deportations from Rejowiec. The SS men Gustav Jeske and Peter Oster were stationed at a labor camp in the Rejowiec area. According to eyewitnesses, these men were also involved in the deportations.^[6] Other police units from Chełm that took part in the deportations were: the 5th Company of the Sonderdienst (volksdeutscher Selbstschutz), under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Weispflock; the 2nd Company of the 316th Police Battalion; the 67th Reserve Police Battalion, and the 25th Police Regiment, also known as the "Cholm" Battalion.^[7]

The first deportation from Rejowiec to a death camp, most likely to Sobibor, took place on April 7, 1942, and it resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people, most of the town's Jewish population.^[8] A smaller group of some 400-500 Jews was sent to the Krychów Wasserwirtschaft (water management) labor camp on April 8.^[9] Some 400 Jews^[10] managed to remain in the town, either because they were deemed "useful" as laborers at the Budny estate (which housed "Pferde[…] Gut Rejowiec," an agency dealing with the procurement and training of horses for military purposes; "Remontamt", a firm specializing in the acquisition and improvement of land, and a sugar mill),^[11] located one kilometer east of Rejowiec, or because they had been able to hide away for a time. These Jews were all relocated to a single street near the town square.^[12] Eventually (most likely in early 1943), this ghetto was fenced off with barbed wire.^[13]...