Before Operation Reinhard

Before the war, Piaski, a small town southeast of Lublin, had been a majority-Jewish town. In 1921, Jews numbered 2,674 of 3,974 residents (about 67 percent). The community maintained a synagogue, at least one prayer house, two cemeteries, a mikveh, and a kosher slaughterhouse. Jewish mills and workshops formed the backbone of the local economy, and political and cultural life was active, with Zionist, Bundist, and religious parties; libraries; and a Tarbut school. Fires, economic crisis, and rising antisemitism in the 1930s strained the community, but it remained vibrant on the eve of the German–Soviet invasion.

Piaski first served in 1939 as a reception point for Jews pushed out of Lublin. In 1940 the first groups from the Reich arrived, including deportees from Stettin. Piaski’s wartime story is closely linked to that of nearby Bełżyce, not least through letters that survived from both places and document daily life under German occupation. By June 1941, the authorities counted 4,803 Jews in Piaski, including 852 uprooted from Kraków and Stettin—far too many for a settlement without basic infrastructure. Unlike larger towns, Piaski had no rail connection. Deportees were sent by train to Trawniki and forced to march the remaining distance on foot. The ghetto’s most acute problem was water, as residents relied on a single well.

Space and hygiene conditions were catastrophic. In September 1941, the JSS Lublin District reported that only 5,885 square meters of living area were available for roughly 4,900 Jews—less than 1.2 square meters per person. Piaski was noted for having a particularly high share of individuals deemed “unfit for labor.” Under such conditions, more than 1,500 people likely died in the ghetto from hunger, disease, and neglect even before deportations had accelerated.

During Operation Reinhard

The wartime transformation of Piaski into a transit ghetto—characterized by deprivation, relentless inflows of deportees, and systematic deportations to Bełżec and Sobibór—condensed the broader logic of genocide into a single, devastated town. From late 1941 into 1942, Piaski took on a defined role in Operation Reinhard as a transit ghetto. SS officer Hermann Höfle designated it as one of the first places from which transports to extermination camps would depart. In March and April 1942, a rapid succession of trains arrived: on March 23 a transport from the Rhineland, including people from Darmstadt and Mainz (including the mother of the writer Anna Seghers); on March 28 a transport from Berlin; on April 1 about 1,000 from Theresienstadt; and on April 6 a transport from Munich. As the town overflowed with new arrivals, German officials moved to “make space” by removing those considered expendable.

On April 11, 1942, the first mass deportation from Piaski to Bełżec took place, targeting above all the elderly, children, and others categorized as unfit for work—many of them newly arrived. Contemporaneous letters and later testimonies describe scenes of chaos and separation. At least 3,000 people were murdered in that wave, although more than 6,000 had been brought to Piaski around that time. Additional deportations to Sobibór followed in July 1942, and the ghetto’s final liquidation came in November 1942.

After Operation Reinhard

Only a few dozen of Piaski’s Jews are known to have survived, most by fleeing early or finding shelter with Polish families in nearby villages. No Jewish community was reestablished in Piaski after the war. The letters preserved from Piaski and Bełżyce became important documents for reconstructing daily life in the transit ghettos, and in later decades commemorative markers were placed at the devastated Jewish cemetery.