שילוח מ - Uscimow, Wlodawa, Lublin, פולין ל - Ostrow Lubelski, Wlodawa, Lublin, פולין ב- 10/10/1942

The village of Uścimów is the seat of a gmina (municipality or commune) some 41 kilometers northeast of the center of Lublin. According to the 1921 census, 128 Jews lived in the municipality.^[1] The gmina contained nineteen settlements, eight of which had Jewish communities: Bobryk (eleven Jews), Drozdówka (eleven), Głębokie (sixteen), the village of Krasne (fifty), Maśluchy (four), Orzechów-kolonia (thirteen), Orzechów Nowy (fourteen), and Uścimów Nowy (nine). During the war, the family of Leon Eliezer Grinblat Grimblovski – his parents and siblings – were the only Jews living in Orzechów Stary. There were also a few Jewish families in Orzechów-kolonia. Menasze Szczupak, the owner of fish ponds in the area, was the head of these families. His son-in-law was Herszel Pachciarowicz. Orzechów Nowy was home to Mordechai and Gitla Frydman, who owned a mill, and an oil press; to their children Chaya, Zipora, and Abram; to their son-in-law Chil Kodeńczuk; and to the families of Ideł Tenenbaum, Hersz Kodeńczuk, Szlomo the tailor, and Hersz (last names unknown). In Bobryk, there were 6-7 Jewish families, with thirty-five members in total;^[2] one of them was Mala Frydman Zanger’s family, who had arrived from Warsaw during the war.^[3]

The Germans occupied the area in October 1939, after the withdrawal of the Soviet army.^[4] The municipality was initially part of the Radzyń County of the Lublin District, under Kreishauptmann Hennig von Winterfeld. In September 1941, it was administratively reassigned to the Lublin County (Kreis Lublin-Land), where Emil Ziegenmeyer was the County Governor.^[5] There was a Kriminalkommissariat post of the Security Police and the SD in the town of Lubartów, 20 kilometers west.^[6] A large German unit of about 120 men was stationed in Sosnowica, while another unit of eight stayed at the manor house in the village of Jedlanka.^[7] “The Germans seldom came to our village,” recalled Eliezer Grinblat from Orzechów Stary, “but there was a local gendarme, who was the terror of Sosnowiec [Sosnowica], Ostrów, and our village. He was the volksdeutsch Edward Retz, who lived with us constantly, had disappeared before the war (he must have been a spy), and reappeared in a gendarme’s uniform after the Germans had arrived.”^[8]

Shortly after the outbreak of war (the exact date is unknown), the German authorities deported a group of Roma and Sinti – men, women, and children – from the Suwałki area to Orzechów Stary. The deportees had nowhere to stay, and no means of supporting themselves. Some time later, the German gendarmes brutally murdered all of them.^[9] On another occasion, the gendarmes carried out a reprisal action for the assassination of a German in Lubartów, using hand grenades and guns to kill Jews and Poles in the gmina. Jewish families from the villages of Głębokie, Krasne, Bobryk, and Orzechów Nowy were murdered at this time, and many houses were burned. Thus, Cypora Fridman Koren's mother and two siblings were killed with a grenade; their house in Orzechów Nowy was demolished, and their property was taken to the manor house in Jedlanki.^[10]...