שילוח מ - Gorzkow, Krasnystaw, Lublin, פולין ל - Góry, Krasnystaw, Lublin, פולין ב- 04/1942

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, there were 1,100 Jewish residents in the village.^[1] After the partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, according to the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Gorzków fell under the administration of the Krasnystaw County (Kreis) within the Lublin District (Distrikt) of the General Government (Generalgouvernement; the part of German-occupied Poland that had not been officially annexed to the Reich). The County Governor (Kreishauptmann), who oversaw the deportations of Jews in the county, was Fritz-Hans Adolf Schmidt (years in office: 1941-1944).

The Krasnystaw County became an important hub for deportations of Jews from the Reich to the annihilation camps of Sobibor and Belzec. In March 1942, most of the local Jews were already slated for deportation, and 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, which was home to the largest transit ghetto, where thousands of deportees were detained, while other transports were redirected to the county capital of Krasnystaw, as well as to Kraśniczyn, Krasnystaw (the county capital town, Wysokie, Żółkiewka, Turobin, and Gorzków.  

As early as December 1939, a transport of Jews from Łódź arrived in Izbica. From there, some of the 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] These new arrivals shared the tragic fate of the other 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] In addition to these major transports, smaller groups of Jews were removed from their homes in Gorzków, marched into the fields or to a nearby cemetery, and murdered. Most of these small-scale transports took place in the course of 1942, and they were reported in 1945, during the investigation of Nazi crimes by the county court in Krasnystaw. The details were provided by municipal officials. The mayor of Gorzków testified that, in April 1942, twenty-three Jews—six locals and seventeen refugees from Łódź residing in Gorzków—had been forcibly removed from their homes by the "Gestapo stationed in Izbica" (i.e., the Security Police and SD, KdS, in Krasnystaw), and then most likely marched outside the village, across the Żółkiewka River, to the Jewish cemetery near gromada Góra in gmina Gorzków, and shot there. The distance between Gorzków and the cemetery is less than one kilometer. The bodies were buried in a grave there. The names of the local victims were: Icek Helfman (fifty-eight years old, a merchant), his wife Chaja Helfman (fifty-eight years old), Ita Helfman (thirty years old), Chana Hochman (forty-eight years old), Josef Hochman (her fourteen-year-old son), and Abram Listhaus (thirty years old). The others, whose names are not given, were refugees from Łódź.^[6]...