The town of Piaski, some 23 kilometers southeast of Lublin, was home to 4,165 Jews on the eve of World War II.^[1] The Wehrmacht occupied the town in October 1939, after a brief interlude of Soviet rule.^[2] Under German authority, Piaski was assigned to the Lublin County (Kreis Lublin-Land) of the Lublin District of the General Government (Generalgouvernement) – German-occupied central Poland, which had not been annexed to the Reich. On October 4, 1939, Emil Ziegenmeyer was appointed Kreishauptmann [county chief] of the Lublin County.^[3]

Shortly afterward, the German authorities ordered the establishment of a Judenrat (Jewish Council) in the town, with Mendel Polisecki as its chairman.^[4] Other known members of this body were Yosel Rosenblat, Yosel Ashman, and Moshe Drayblat.^[5] On January 1, 1940, the Wehrmacht left Piaski, and the German Gendarmerie became responsible for maintaining the occupation regime in the town.^[6]

In early 1940, the Germans set up the Piaski Ghetto in the area of the town's Jewish quarter.^[7] It subsequently became one of the main transit ghettos [Durchgangsgetto] of the Lublin District. Established at the beginning of Operation Reinhard, the transit ghettoes were located along the railway lines leading to the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Their primary purpose was to serve as assembly points for Jews being deported into the Lublin District from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia. Polish Jews from the surrounding towns and villages were concentrated in these ghettoes, as well.^[8]...