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3 Killing site(s)
Helena D., born in 1927: "The Germans rounded up the Jews in the town and took them to a spot near my house, clearly visible from my window. Among them were women, children, and men. German gendarmes, accompanied by their dogs, surrounded the group, but no one tried to escape. They were shot, and as they fell, terrible screams filled the air. It was horrific. A Polish man came to collect the people who weren’t dead yet, and a German soldier followed to finish them off. The bodies were then put in three pits, which had been dug earlier by other Jews. The corpses were laid in rows and covered with lime. [...] This took place in the ghetto area." [Testimony N°YIU62P, interviewed in Chełm, on July 17, 2011]
"As I’ve already mentioned, we arrived in Borek on 11 November 1943. We did nothing for a fortnight. After two weeks we were ordered to dig a pit 80-100m long, 2,5m wide and about 1.50-1.80m deep. We dug around 8 pits, two small ones (40-50m long) and six long (around 80-100m long). We came across human corpses while digging the pits. There were thousands of bodies. The corpses were bound together with wire. They were the bodies of Russian POWs. The bodies were in a state of decomposition. I recognized them as Russian soldiers by their clothes [...]. Sometimes, live people were brought in and shot by Hugo R. and other SS men. The shootings usually took place at night or in the early hours of the morning (…) We were locked up at the time, but we could hear the shooting. The next day they burned and ground up the bodies. I would like to add that when we opened the pits, we didn’t only find the bodies of Russian soldiers, but also bodies of Jews and Italians. In one pit we found around 3,000 bodies of Jews from Hrubieszow, which we identified from the documents we found on them. In another pit were the bodies of Italian and Russian soldiers. We knew they were Italians because of their uniforms and buttons; there were about 2,000 of them (…) During my stay in the camp, from December 1943 to 24 February 1944, 30,000 bodies were burned, that is, there were 30 cremation pits, that’s how I know the number. Among them were about 20,000 Russian bodies and about 3,000 Jewish bodies (they had been buried before we arrived)." [Deposition of Jozef Sterdyne, a Jewish survivor and a worker of the SK 1005, given at Landsberg on July 26, 1960; B162-4982]
"I was walking on Lubelska Street. There were very few people walking there at the time. I heard a few gunshots and saw passers-by flee and take refuge wherever they could. I also rushed to the nearest door. Hidden away, 30-50 metres away, I saw R. (SS man) come out of nowhere and shoot a series of handguns at the Jews lined up in front of the fence, their faces turned towards him. Three Jewish men and 4 Jewish women fell under his bullets, one after the other, and never got up again. I saw that the Jews were all on the ground, but I could still hear shooting. Then R., furious, jumped on his motorbike and rode off up Lubelska Street." [Deposition of Jozef Sawicki, resident of Chełm, born in 1896, compiled on November 8, 1968; DS 196/67]
Chełm is a town in eastern Poland, located 69 kilometers east-southeast of Lublin and 25 kilometers from the Bug River. A Jewish community appears to have been established in Chełm as early as the beginning of the 13th century. By the 16th century, it had become one of the largest and most significant Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Poland. By 1629, the community had grown to 800 people, comprising 31% of Chełm’s total population.
The period of prosperity for the Jewish community, which was actively involved in agriculture and international trade in leather, wool, and flour, was disrupted in 1648 by the Cossack invasion led by Khmelnitsky, resulting in a pogrom that claimed the lives of 400 Jews in Chełm. However, by the early 18th century, the community had revived and played a crucial role in export trade. By the late 18th century, Jewish-owned businesses, including an oil mill, a tannery, and brassware workshops, flourished in the town.
Following the third partition of Poland in 1795, conditions worsened for the Jewish community, largely due to restrictions on access to certain markets.
Before World War I, Jews dominated commerce in Chełm and owned a variety of services, including dental offices, pharmacies, printers, a bookstore, and a stamp factory. At that time, the community also had a synagogue, a house of prayer, two mikvots, six religious schools, and a cemetery. By 1913, the Jewish population in Chełm had grown to 12,713, making up 54.5% of the town’s total population.
During the interwar period, the Jewish community not only maintained religious institutions but also operated an orphanage, an elderly care home, a yeshivah, and a secondary school. Political life was vibrant, with several active Zionist parties, as well as the Bund and the anti-Zionist Agudat Israel. However, the interwar years were also marked by a worsening economic situation and a rise in antisemitism, prompting some of Chełm’s Jews to emigrate to the USA and Palestine.
By 1939, approximately 15,000 Jews lived in Chełm, representing nearly half of the city’s total population.
In early September 1939, Chełm was occupied by German troops. However, they were forced to retreat before the advancing Red Army on September 25, 1939, only to retake the town two weeks later under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Several hundred Jews managed to escape the town during the Soviet withdrawal. On October 9, 1939, German troops officially took over Chełm. On November 30, 1939, 1,600 Jewish men from Chełm and Hrubieszów were among the first victims of the Chełm death march. They were forced to march to the Soviet border near Bełżec and Sokal, with nearly a thousand dying along the way. Of these, 440 Jews from Chełm were shot by the SS, while approximately 400 others drowned after being forced to cross the icy Bug River. Only 400 Chełm Jews returned.
The first mass execution in Chełm took place on January 12, 1940, when the Gestapo murdered around 400 patients at the town’s psychiatric hospital, including Jewish adults and children, who were executed and buried in mass graves.
In December 1939, the Germans established a 10-member Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Chełm. The Jewish community was subjected to confiscation of property, forced labor, and demands for large financial contributions. By November 1940, the Jews were relocated to the south-central part of town, initially in an open ghetto, which was converted into a closed ghetto by the end of 1941. Guarded by German and Polish police, along with a 150-man Jewish Order Police force, the ghetto saw harsh conditions. Jews attempting to leave or smuggle in food were executed. By December 1941, the ghetto housed 12,500 Jews and was plagued by overcrowding, starvation, and a typhus epidemic.
Despite these dire conditions, the Jewish Council and the Jewish Social Self-Help (JSS) branch established a welfare system with three communal kitchens, a medical clinic, and a hospital for infectious diseases. The local child welfare program was one of the most developed in the Lublin district, serving 5,000 children, providing education, free medical care, and daily meals for 600 of the neediest children.
Some Jewish artisans, tradesmen, and health workers were permitted to operate small businesses within the ghetto. By June 1941, about 1,400 artisans had craft licenses. Many Jews were forced into labor: 1,800 worked in road and railway construction, 250 were interned in local labor camps, and numerous women worked as domestic servants for Germans.
The liquidation of the Chełm ghetto began through a series of deportations and mass executions from May to November 1942. The first deportation took place on May 21-23, 1942, when 5,000 Jews, including 2,000 Slovakian deportees, were sent to the Sobibor extermination camp. In June 1942, another 600 Jews were deported to Sobibor, and those attempting to hide were executed. On October 5, 1942, an additional 1,000 Jews were sent to Sobibor, followed by 3,300 more in late October, many of whom were beaten or shot during the journey.
The final deportation occurred on November 6, 1942, during the ghetto’s liquidation. The remaining 4,000 Jews were gathered and led by the SS and Ukrainian auxiliaries to the railway station, with the first group immediately sent to Sobibor. Jews who tried to hide were hunted down and shot, and SS-Oberscharführer Hugo R., infamous for his brutality, ordered the ghetto to be set on fire to flush out those in hiding, resulting in hundreds of deaths. On November 13, 1942, the SS announced that Jews could report to a camp established at the pre-war Staszic public school on Katowska Street, but several hundred fugitives who reported there were executed
In the weeks following the ghetto’s liquidation, when typhus spread through the labor camps, hundreds of sick inmates were executed in the Borek forest. Jewish Council members, initially held at the Wasserwirtschaftsinspektion camp, were also shot.
By January 1943, all remaining laborers in the "school camp" and the "craftsmen’s camp" near the railway station, including Jewish policemen, were deported to Sobibor. Only eight craftsmen survived, having been held in Chełm prison. Among the survivors were three participants in the Sobibor camp revolt, along with about 50 Chełm Jews who managed to escape the ghetto or evade deportation to extermination camps.
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