שילוח מ - Glusk, Lublin, Lublin, פולין ל - Lublin (Flugplatz), מחנה, פולין ב- 01/08/1941

Głusk, a town on the outskirts of Lublin, was occupied by the Wehrmacht on September 18, 1939. At the time, it was home to 530 Jews.^[1] Following the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army entered the town shortly afterward. When it retreated, some Jewish families departed with the Soviet soldiers.^[2] The Germans reoccupied the area in October 1939. The town was then administratively assigned to the Zemborzyce gmina (municipality), in the Lublin County of the Lublin District.

Emil Ziegenmeyer was appointed the Lublin County governor.^[3] The Lublin County had a separate civil administration, different from that of the city of Lublin. The administrative staff in Ziegenmeyer's office included Fichtner and Rodde; the secretary was Gerhard Forster, while the police department of the Lublin-Land civil administration was headed by Schoof (first names unknown, except for Forster). After receiving the deportation orders, Ziegenmeyer and his team decided how many people were to be deported from different localities in the county at any given time.^[4] While Głusk itself had no Gendarmerie station, there was a Gendarmerie post in Piaski and in Lubartow (in addition to the one in the city of Lublin).^[5] Local witnesses recalled two specific German gendarmes, who would come to Głusk from the nearby station in Lublin to carry out executions, but their names remain unknown.^[6] The Governor's office had at its disposal a commando unit of some thirty Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans). The records of postwar trials list the names of forty-nine gendarmes from the Lublin-Land unit, sixteen policemen from the 22nd SS-Police Regiment, two policemen from the 25th SS-Police Regiment, four men from the 81st SS-Police Regiment, thirteen men from the motorized Gendarmerie Battalion, two from the 3rd SS Police Cavalry unit, twenty from the SS-Polizei-Reiterschwadron Lublin, and fifteen from the 71st motorized Gendarmerie Platoon.^[7]

From October 26, 1939, the movement of Jews in the area was restricted to the place in which they were registered, and every Jew between the ages of 14-60 had to work.^[8] From December 1, 1939, all Jews were required to wear an armband.^[9] No ghetto was established in Głusk, and the families lived in their homes until October 1942.^[10] Rabbi Szafirsztejn acted as the head of the Jewish Council of Głusk.^[11] The Judenrat had to provide groups to be sent to forced labor; these workers had to set up fortifications on the Russian border at the Belzec labor camp and build the barbed-wire fence in preparation for the construction of the camp in nearby Majdanek.^[12]...