שילוח מ - Turobin, Krasnystaw, Lublin, פולין ל - Turobin, אתר רצח ב- 17/10/1942

Turobin is a town in the Lublin Voivodeship in southeastern Poland. According to historian Tatiana Berenstein, on the eve of World War II the town was home to 1,400 Jews.^[1] After the outbreak of war in September 1939, Turobin was briefly occupied by the Red Army. However, following the partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the town was ceded to the Germans, being administratively assigned to the Krasnystaw County (Kreis) of the Lublin District (Distrikt) of the General Government (the part of German-occupied Poland that had not been officially annexed to the Reich).

The Krasnystaw County became an important hub of deportations of Jews from the Reich to the extermination camps of Sobibor and Belzec. Like some other towns in the county, Turobin absorbed refugees and deportees from elsewhere, who began to arrive as early as December 1939. Because of the influx of these refugees and deportees, the number of Jews in Turobin grew rapidly, reaching 3,300 in the spring of 1941 and continuing to grow.^[2] The first deportation from Turobin took place on May 12 or 14, 1942, when the majority of the local Jews were shipped to Sobibor via Krasnystaw.^[3] The final, Judenrein, deportation was carried out in October 1942,^[4] resulting in the removal of the town's remaining Jewish population. However, before the departure of this final transport, a group of 10-14 Jews, including members of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) and the wealthier Jewish families, were murdered, most likely on October 16. This massacre was witnessed by both Jews and non-Jews.

According to the testimony of Franciszek Szumowski, the sołtys (town headman) of Turobin in 1942, three Germans from the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) arrived from Krasnystaw that autumn. They arrested the members of the Judenrat and took them to a forest about 3 kilometers from the town. According to Yitzchak Lander, a resident of the neighboring village of Tokary, the Judenrat members were murdered in cold blood near the brick factory, which is located near the woods some 3 kilometers east of Turobin.^[5]  Itte Fass (née Zwekin), a resident of Turobin who had served as a runner for the Judenrat, gave a detailed account of the course of this deportation:...