שילוח מ - Chodel, גטו, פולין ל - Belzyce, Lublin, Lublin, פולין ב- 21/09/1942

On the eve of World War II, Chodel, a village 39 kilometers southwest of Lublin, had 776 Jewish residents.^[1] German forces occupied the village on September 16, 1939.^[2] Under Nazi administration, Chodel became part of the Lublin County (Kreis) of the Lublin District (Distrikt) within the General Government (Generalgouvernement; the part of Nazi-occupied Poland that was not officially annexed to the Reich).^[3]

By January 1940, a Jewish Council (Judenrat) of thirteen members had been set up in the village, with Chil Grinberg as the chairman. He was replaced by Icek Mendel Erlich in August that year.^[4] Throughout 1940, the Jews of Chodel had to perform forced labor.^[5] On January 6, 1941, the Judenrat wrote to the Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw that 163 members of the community had been working at the Józefów (on the Vistula River), Belzec, and Sawin labor camps.^[6] The village became a collection point for deportees from Łódź, Puławy, and Warsaw. In March 1941, 203 Jews from Kraków were also deported to Chodel. Because of these transports, by June 6, 1941 the Jewish population of Chodel had increased to 1,655, including 947 deportees.^[7] On September 19 that year, Emil Ziegenmeyer, the Kreishauptmann of Lublin-Land, designated Chodel, Bychawa, and Bełżyce as Judensammelorte (Jewish assembly sites).

The Oyneg Shabes Biuletyn report on the situation of Jews in the territory of Poland for April-May 1942 refers to the developments in Chodel, stating: "In the first decade of May, there was a massacre of the Jewish population in the town. There were many victims. A large part of the Jewish population was deported in an 'unknown direction.'"^[8] On May 19, Ziegenmeyer recommended that the 1398 Jews of Chodel, along with those of several other communities, be "resettled." Historian David Silberklang dates the deportation of 1,400 Jews from Chodel to Opole, which was accompanied by mass shootings of Jews in the town, to early May 1942 – a date that is consistent with the Oyneg Shabes report.^[9] However, the survivors' testimonies lead us to conclude that the liquidation of the ghetto and the main deportation of Jews from Chodel took place on Yom Kippur 1942, as proposed by historian Tatiana Berenstein.^[10]...