Before Operation Reinhard

Before World War II, the small town of Włodawa, near today’s borders of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine, was a thriving center of Jewish life. More than sixty percent of its nine thousand inhabitants—over 5,500 people—were Jewish. The heart of this community was the synagogue complex, which included the Great Synagogue, the Small Synagogue, and the Beit Midrash. Built in the eighteenth century and expanded over time, the buildings reflected the community’s prosperity and spiritual vitality.

When Nazi Germany occupied Włodawa in 1939, the synagogue complex was confiscated by the SS and used as a storage site. By 1940, Jewish-owned businesses were seized, and forced labor became part of daily life. The local labor office, run by officials named Gutsche and Gröh, compelled the Jewish council [Judenrat] to provide workers for German firms. The largest employer was the Rohde Company, directed locally by engineer Bernhard Falkenberg, who managed large drainage projects for the Water Administration Office in Chełm. By 1942, Falkenberg employed some 1,500 Jews and became known for treating his workers humanely and for shielding many from deportation. In 1969, he was honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.

During Operation Reinhard

In early 1942, the Germans established a ghetto in Włodawa, transforming it into one of the principal transit ghettos of Operation Reinhard—the Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews of occupied Poland. Jews from Włodawa and surrounding towns were forced into the ghetto together with deportees from Germany and Austria, including around one thousand Jews from Vienna who had been sent east. The town became one of the final stops before death in the Sobibór extermination camp, only twelve kilometers away.

Between May and October 1942, about twelve thousand Jews were deported from Włodawa in six transports to Sobibór; nearly all were murdered upon arrival. The first major deportation occurred between May 18 and 23, 1942, on the orders of the district governor, Werner Ansel. About 1,200 Jews—the elderly and those unfit for work—were marched to the train station and sent to Sobibór. Hundreds more were shot in the streets during the roundups.

In July 1942, the Nazis staged a “Kinderaktion,” an operation targeting Jewish children. On Saturday, July 24, parents were ordered to bring their children to the town’s sports field. About seven hundred children were taken from their families and loaded onto trucks bound for Sobibór. Survivor Ephraim Tilip remembered how Rabbi Mendel Morgenstern, a descendant of the Kotzk Hasidic dynasty, insisted on accompanying his children to death rather than abandon them. His act of faith and courage became part of Włodawa’s tragic legacy.

A second large-scale deportation followed on October 24, 1942. Approximately five thousand Jews from Włodawa and nearby villages were forced once again onto the sports field, along with thousands from Chełm and other localities. About fifty skilled laborers were selected to stay behind, while the rest—some ten thousand men, women, and children—were led on foot several kilometers through mud and rain to the railway station in Orchówek. From there, trains departed to Sobibór.

Eyewitness Sara Omolinski described the terror: “Women and mothers who would not release their children were beaten with clubs and rifles. The screaming and crying rose to heaven. Two long columns—one of men, one of women—moved toward the station. Over ten thousand people struggled through the mud on their way to Sobibór.” At the station, Falkenberg again intervened, selecting a group of workers for his projects and saving them, at least temporarily, from certain death.

After October 1942, Włodawa was designated a “Jewish residential district” [Judenwohnbezirk], ostensibly a safe zone that actually served to entrap remaining Jews. A small ghetto was established on Wyrykowska and Jatkowska Streets, housing about five hundred craftsmen and their families behind barbed wire.

On April 30, 1943, this ghetto and its adjacent labor camp were liquidated. Roughly two thousand Jews were deported to Sobibór and murdered. The few who survived owed their lives mainly to transfers to other labor camps under German control.

After Operation Reinhard

When the Red Army liberated Włodawa on July 22, 1944, only about 145 Jews remained of the prewar population of over five thousand. The war had wiped out more than half of the town’s entire population and left its Jewish life in ruins. After liberation, a small Jewish Religious Union briefly reformed, but by 1947 only a few members were left. The synagogue complex, which had been used as a warehouse during the war, fell into disrepair. Its restoration began in the late 1970s, and in 1983 it reopened as a museum dedicated to Jewish culture and memory in the Lublin region.