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Transit Ghettos
in the Lublin District

The episode of the transit ghettos in the Lublin District was short but highly significant, marking the threshold of the full implementation of the Operation Reinhard [Aktion Reinhardt] extermination program — and with it, the most murderous phase of the Holocaust. Around 350,000 Jews were living in the Lublin District, one of four—later, with the addition of the District of Galicia, five—districts of the General Government, a part of German-occupied Poland.

Between March 11 and June 15, 1942, 71 deportation trains—each carrying roughly 1,000–1,500 Jewish men, women and children—arrived in rapid succession in the General Government; the total number likely reached up to 85,000. Except for four trains sent to Warsaw, all were directed to the Lublin District. After an initial stop at the ramp of the Alter Flugplatz (Airfield) camp in Lublin, most trains were forwarded to small towns in the region—the so-called transit ghettos. The deportees came from Germany, Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (today’s Czech Republic), Poland, Slovakia, and Luxembourg, with a heavy concentration from Slovakia (about 39,000 people in 38 transports). Four all-male transports from Žilina, Sereď, and Nováky (March 29–April 7) were sent straight to the Majdanek concentration camp, which some 4,500 Slovak Jews were forced to help build.

A new research study identified 25 towns that became transit ghettos across six of the district’s ten counties (notably, Izbica, Piaski, and Rejowiec, as well as Lubartów, Włodawa, Końskowola, Międzyrzec, Łuków, Zamość, Puławy/Irena, and more). Selection followed practical criteria. It was done in small, easily controlled places with a very high proportion of Jews, close to rail lines and 60–100 km from Bełżec and Sobibór. The three largest—Izbica (some 16,000–17,000 arrivals from multiple countries), Piaski (up to 6,000, mainly from the Protectorate/Germany) and Rejowiec (about 5,000, mainly from the Protectorate/Slovakia)—also functioned as labor reservoirs. Many deportees were soon forced into labor camps run by water management authorities, the Wehrmacht, the SS, or by civilian employers; the work was grueling, largely unpaid—and rarely a path to survival.

At exactly the moment the first foreign transports arrived (March 1942), the Germans began deporting Jews from Lublin-District ghettos to the Bełżec killing center. This timing was deliberate. Newcomers were to be settled where local Polish Jews had just been removed. In January, at the Wannsee Conference, State Secretary Josef Bühler had already urged a swift start to the mass murder in the General Government. In early June 1942, policy shifted again. Trains no longer went to transit ghettos but directly to the killing centers—first Sobibór, and from late July also Treblinka—where the victims were killed in gas chambers in less than an hour. From Slovakia alone, roughly 10,000 people arrived at Sobibór between June 1 and 14 and were murdered there.

Transit ghettos existed only briefly. From late August 1942, the occupiers dissolved them and killed their inmates—including the foreign deportees who had survived until then. By the end of 1942, the region’s Jewish shtetls had largely disappeared; a few “residual ghettos” remained as a temporary stage. The Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger ordered eight “Jewish towns” in six counties, six of which had been former transit ghettos (including Izbica, Włodawa, Końskowola, Piaski, Międzyrzec, Łuków). These last enclaves were cleared in spring 1943; Jewish life continued only in a handful of forced-labor camps, most of which were dissolved by late autumn 1943 with the laborers murdered. Survivors from the trains to the Lublin District were exceedingly rare; language barriers, lack of contacts, and the density of persecution made escape or hiding almost impossible. Of 17 transports from Theresienstadt containing about 17,000 people (March 11–June 13), only 65 are known to have survived—none from Austria, two from Germany, and none of the 24 deported from Luxembourg. There are no reliable survival figures for Slovakia.

The administrative apparatus acted flexibly and purposefully. Shortly before the wave began, Bühler informed Lublin’s governor Ernst Zörner that he had agreed that “a total of 14,660 Jews will temporarily take up residence in the Lublin District.” In reality, nearly six times as many arrived. The escalation reflected political pressure to implement the Final Solution. Following Göring’s authorization to Heydrich (July 31, 1941), the Wannsee Conference set out the program: Europe was to be combed “from west to east,” with “the evacuated Jews… to be brought, in stages—train by train—first to so-called transit ghettos.” The RSHA (IV B 4/Eichmann) organized routes, timetables, and police escorts; on March 6, 1942, Eichmann announced 55,000 expulsions from Germany. In Lublin, the civil administration had to house and feed arrivals—while simultaneously pushing to “relieve” itself of them via killing deportations. In April 1942, the head of the relevant office stated the “population exchange” idea in blunt terms: “Based on my proposal there is fundamental clarity that, insofar as Jews from the West are being settled here, local Jews are to be ‘resettled’ in the same proportion.” Euphemisms such as “resettlement” masked actual murder in Bełżec. Local civil officials—documented in places such as Izbica, Hrubieszów and Lubartów—actively organized clearances, selections, and transports.

Such transports mainly used third-class passenger cars (sometimes straw-lined freight cars for bedridden people). RSHA guidelines capped each train at about 1,000 passengers; in practice, 900–1,100 traveled—women, men, children, the elderly, and the sick. Baggage and money were tightly restricted; tickets had to be purchased from the Reichsbahn, with Jewish communities covering costs when necessary. Order Police detachments (around 15 men) guarded the trains; contact with outsiders was forbidden. A ban on writing applied to all deportees for the duration of the journey [“Während der Reise für alle Teilnehmer Schreibverbot”]. A Jewish transport committee maintained “order,” and medical staff accompanied the train.

From Slovakia, trains ran via Čadca–Zwardoń toward Lublin, where Einsatz Reinhardt staff took charge. One deportee from Sabinov recalled: “At the border we were taken over by the German Security Service (SD) merely by headcount, with the men mustering on the platform [sic] and the women being counted in the cars. The journey then continued until, after 2–3 days of travel, we were unloaded in Rejowiec-Lubelski (Lublin District). Throughout the entire journey we suffered from a severe shortage of water, since during all that time we received water only twice. We were given no food at all, but we had plenty of provisions with us.”

Transit Ghettos

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Izbica

Izbica served as one of the major transit ghettos of Operation Reinhard. Jews from the Lublin region, as well as from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, were concentrated there before deportation to Bełżec and Sobibór. Overcrowding, hunger, and violence made survival extremely difficult. Izbica shows how small towns in the region were transformed into temporary holding sites on the road to extermination.

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Kraśnik

Before the Holocaust, Kraśnik was home to a substantial Jewish community that played an important role in the town’s commercial and communal life. Under German occupation, Jews were confined, exploited as forced laborers, and deported to Bełżec, while the town also served as a collection point for Jews from nearby localities. Kraśnik illustrates how established Jewish communities across the district were dismantled through confinement, forced labor, and deportation.

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Włodawa

Włodawa, near the present-day borders with Belarus and Ukraine, had a long-established Jewish community. During the German occupation, its synagogue complex was used by the SS as a collection and storage site. Many Jews from Włodawa and the surrounding area were deported to nearby Sobibór, just 12 kilometers away. Today, the preserved synagogue stands as a rare witness to the region’s rich Jewish life and its destruction.

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Józefów

Józefów became the site of one of the most notorious mass shootings in the Lublin District. On 13 July 1942, German Reserve Police Battalion 101 murdered much of the town’s Jewish population in the nearby forest, while others were deported to camps. Józefów reveals how the destruction of Jewish communities in the region was carried out not only in killing centers, but also in forests and fields close to home.

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Piaski

In 1942, the village of Piaski was turned into a transit ghetto. Jews from the Lublin region, as well as from Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, were concentrated there before deportation to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Majdanek. Overcrowding, hunger, and disease claimed many lives even before deportation. Piaski shows how small localities were absorbed into the wider machinery of genocide.

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Poniatowa

Poniatowa became the site of a forced labor camp for Jews brought to the Lublin district from the Warsaw Ghetto prior to its liquidation in winter and spring of 1943. Prisoners, who also included deportees from Slovakia, Germany, and Austria, were exploited in textile and armaments production under brutal conditions. In November of that same year, during the “Harvest Festival” massacre, approximately 14,000 Jews were murdered there in a single day.

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Zamość

Zamość was home to a longstanding Jewish community before the Holocaust. During the German occupation, the town became a site of ghettoization, forced labor, and deportation, as Jews from the town and the surrounding region were drawn into the machinery of Operation Reinhard. Many were later deported to Bełżec and other camps. The history of Zamość reflects how a center of Jewish life was systematically dismantled and destroyed in view of the local population and German civilians.

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Trawniki

The SS and Police Leader’s office in Lublin formally established the SS forced labour camp at Trawniki in spring 1943. A Jewish forced labour camp, however, had already existed in the village for approximately two years. It was created in autumn 1941 at roughly the same time as the neighbouring SS training camp.