שילוח מ - Gorzkow, Krasnystaw, Lublin, פולין ל - Gorzkow, Krasnystaw, Lublin, פולין ב- 28/08/1942

Gorzków is a village in the Lublin Voivodeship in southeastern Poland. According to historian Tatiana Berenstein, by the time of the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, the village was home to 1,100 Jews.^[1] That same year, following the partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Gorzków was 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 Third Reich). The County governor (Kreishauptmann), who oversaw the deportations of Jews within the county, was Fritz-Hans Adolf Schmidt (years in office: 1941-1944).

The Krasnystaw County became an important hub for the deportations of Jews from the Reich to the Sobibor and Belzec death camps. By March 1942, most of the local Jews were already slated for deportation, while their residences were to be used to house deportees from the Reich and from other localities in Poland.^[2] As "Operation Reinhard" was getting underway, many transports arrived in Izbica – the biggest transit ghetto, where thousands of deportees were detained, – while others were redirected to the Krasnystaw County, as well as to Kraśniczyn, Krasnystaw (county capital), Wysokie, Żółkiewka, Turobin, and Gorzków.  

As early as December 1939, a transport of Jews from Łódż arrived in Izbica, and some of these Jews were redirected to Gorzków and other localities.^[3] On March 19 or 20, 1942, a transport of some 1,000 Jews from Theresienstadt reached Izbica, and the deportees were taken further to Kraśniczyn and Gorzków.^[4] The deportees shared the tragic fate of the Jews in their host towns. Large-scale deportations of Jews from Gorzków to their deaths were carried out by the Nazis in May and October 1942.^[5] Alongside these major transports, smaller groups of Jews were removed from their homes in Gorzków, marched into the fields or forests, and murdered. While being part of the ongoing Nazi effort to deport and murder all the Jews in the county, these massacres (most of which took place in the course of 1942) also served as collective reprisals; the killers were sometimes motivated by the desire to lay their hands on the Jews' valuables, and by antisemitic hatred and sadism.^[6] These smaller transports were reported in 1945, during the investigation of Nazi crimes by the county court in Krasnystaw. Municipal officials provided details. The headman of Gorzków testified that, on August 28, 1942, thirteen Jews—including both locals and refugees from Łódź— had been rounded up by German gendarmes, marched out of the populated area of Gorzków into the fields beyond the Catholic cemetery at the edge of the village, and shot. Their bodies were buried in a grave or pit measuring 3 by 4 square meters. The authorities were unable to determine the names of the victims, and no exhumation was carried out at the time.^[7]...