שילוח מ - Puchaczow, Lublin, Lublin, פולין ל - Piaski Luterskie, גטו, פולין ב- 20/10/1942

Puchaczów is a small rural town lying approximately 30 kilometers east of Lublin, in the eastern part of the Lublin Voivodeship. Prior to and during World War II, the town was part of the municipality (Polish: gmina) of Brzeziny. According to the Polish census of 1921, Puchaczów had a total population of 1,012, of whom only ninety-four were registered as followers of the Mosaic faith (the census term for Jews).^[1] After the outbreak of war, the village was occupied by the Germans, and came under the administration of the Lublin-Land County (Kreis) of the Lublin District (Distrikt) of the General Government (the part of Nazi-occupied Poland that was not officially annexed to the Reich). The Kreishauptmann (county governor) of the Lublin-Land County, who played an active role in carrying out the deportations of the local Jews to their deaths, was Emil Ziegenmeyer.^[2]

A municipal Jewish Social Self-Help (JSS) office began to operate in Puchaczów in November 1940.^[3] On December 9 that year, a transport of fifty-one deportees from Kraków was dispatched to the village.^[4] According to a JSS report from 1942, there were a total of sixty-nine deportees from Krakow (arrival date: December 11, 1941), Lublin (arrival date: May 5, 1941), and Warsaw (arrival date: March 1, 1941) in Puchaczów.^[5] On April 21, 1942, Odilo Globocnik, the SS and Police Leader (SS und Polizeiführer) of the Lublin District, and SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, the 'expert on Jewish affairs' on Globocnik's staff, ordered the Department of Population Affairs and Welfare (Amt für Innere Verwaltung, Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge (BuF)) to submit a report on the total number of Jews in Lublin-Land, specifying those marked as able and unable to work, as well as the number of their dependent family members. The BuF of the Lublin-Land Kreishauptmannschaft, in turn, ordered the municipal heads (Polish: wójtowie) to submit this information. The resulting report, from May 8, 1942, stated that there was a total of 352 Jews in the Brzeziny municipality. A later report, from August (or possibly September) 1942, provides a breakdown by locality: Puchaczów – 181 Jews; Malinówka – eighty-two; Kamionka – nine; Łańcuchów – twenty-nine; Ostrówek – thirty; Kol. Ostrówek – nine; Kol. Brzeziny – four; Wolka Łańcuchowska – seven; total Jewish population of the municipality – 351.^[6]

In the context of the mass deportations of Jews from the Lublin-Land County, a police order was made public on October 20, 1942. It read:...