The small town of Izbica in southeastern Poland, once over 90 percent Jewish, became the largest of all Nazi transit ghettos during the Holocaust.

Before Operation Reinhard

Founded in the 16th century as a settlement for Jews excluded from nearby Tarnogóra, Izbica remained for centuries a typical shtetl—religious, poor, and self-contained. By 1856 it numbered about 1,600 Jewish residents; in 1921 there were 2,862, more than 90 percent of the population. A center of Hasidic life led by Mordechai Yosef Leiner of the Izbica–Radzyń school, it grew to about 6,000 people before World War II.

Life before the war changed slowly. Most houses were wooden; water came from a few wells, and electricity arrived only in the 1930s. There was a small cinema, a theater group, and active political movements, yet Orthodox tradition still dominated. As survivor Thomas “Toivi” Blatt recalled: “Izbica was a typical shtetl…. The Jews were predominantly Orthodox, but progressive ideas were beginning to take hold.”

After the German occupation in 1939, Izbica became a hub for Jewish deportees from western Poland. The first transport of 1,200 Jews from Łódź and Koło arrived that December. By 1941, about 6,700 Jews were squeezed into the town—locals and refugees alike—sharing overcrowded rooms and minimal rations. The community opened a soup kitchen and small hospital in the synagogue, but disease and hunger spread rapidly.

During Operation Reinhard

Between March and June 1942, German, Austrian, Czech, and Slovak Jews were sent to the Lublin district; many passed through Izbica, located conveniently on the rail line to the death camps Bełżec and Sobibór. The open, unfenced ghetto—isolated by surrounding hills—soon collapsed under the strain. Typhus raged, and people were sleeping in the streets. German authorities created two Judenräte [Jewish councils]—one for Polish and one for foreign Jews, using cultural divisions to tighten control.

In a rare, uncensored letter, German Jew Ernst Krombach described life there: “Everything is forbidden… Trading, buying or selling or speaking with Polish Aryans…. Not long ago more than 20 Polish Jews were shot on a single morning because they were baking bread.”

Deportations to the extermination camps began in March 1942. On March 24, 2,200 people were assembled in the market square and loaded onto trains to Bełżec. Over the spring and summer at least nine transports followed, all marked by beatings, robbery, and murder. The worst came on October 19, 1942, remembered as Izbica’s “Black Day,” when 5,000 Jews were seized—half sent to Bełżec, 1,800 to Sobibór, and hundreds shot near the railway ramp.

After Operation Reinhard

By late 1942, Izbica’s role as a transit ghetto had ended; survivors were hunted down or sent to other ghettos before their eventual deportation and death. Of the roughly 17,000 foreign Jews and thousands of Polish Jews who passed through Izbica, almost none survived.