שילוח מ - Fajsławice, מחנה, פולין ל - Trawniki, מחנה, פולין ב- 11/1943

The Fajsławice forced labor camp was established around 1941 in the vicinity of the village of Fajsławice, some 20 kilometers northwest of Krasnystaw, in the Lublin District of the General Government. The camp was set up in the former manor house of a local peasant named Florkowskie, in the field behind the barns. The deputy commandant of the camp was named Spies [first name and rank unknown]. We do not know the names of the other guards. The camp personnel (both guards and commanders) were quartered in the manor house itself. Rosst [first name unknown], the mayor of Krasnystaw, would visit the camp frequently, supervising the progress of the works.

The Germans built two wooden barracks, each about fifty meters long, initially to house Soviet POWs. The barracks were surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. There was no straw, and the inmates had to sleep on the wooden floor. At a later stage, around 1942, these barracks housed some 200 Polish, Czech, and Hungarian Jews, most of them elderly people.^[1] The Jewish inmates were forced to perform different kinds of melioration work in the area of the manor, including the digging of tunnels and water drainage.^[2] Although there are no testimonies referring to the execution of inmates, the living conditions at the camp must have been dreadful. Local Poles testify that the Jewish inmates were emaciated, and were constantly begging and searching for food. The inmates ate whatever they could find in the fields of the manor, such as potatoes and red beets. At least 100 Jewish laborers died from hunger, cold, and exhaustion. They were buried in the field near the fish ponds in the manor area.^[3]

The camp was liquidated in the late autumn of 1943. Jan Bartnik, a local Pole, recalls:...