3 Killing site(s)
Michalina T., born in 1921: "All the Jews of the Tomaszów district were gathered in the school building. I saw this ghetto because I sometimes walked past it, it wasn’t far. The school was a one-story building, so there wasn’t much room inside. Most of the Jews stayed in the square. The cars came and took them to Belzec. They were Jews from Tomaszów and the surrounding area. I saw the Jews get into the canvas-covered trucks. When the Jews were inside, they [the Germans] surrounded the truck’s canvas with barbed wire. The trucks stopped in front of the school, and then the people were taken out in groups, whole families, including children. The oldest Jews were taken to the pits that were left after the bombings. Now there are apartment buildings there. It’s on the market square, where the synagogue used to be. After the bombing, there were holes where all the old people who couldn’t walk were shot. I saw them. I also saw two Poles, on the orders of the Germans, taking off the shoes of Jews. They lifted their [the victims’] legs to remove the shoes [...] I saw a group of old people coming from Koscielna Street. There were about ten or twelve of them. They were pushed into the pit, and we heard shots. They were very old people so when we pushed them, they fell easily." [Testimony N°YIU430P, interviewed in Tomaszów Lubelski, on March 26, 2015]
Questionnaire on Mass Killings and Mass Graves
1. Date and place of killing: 1942, Tomaszów Lubelski, all the town
2. Method of killing/shooting, hanging or other: Shooting.
3. Details of victims killed:
- Jews remaining in the town, hiding to avoid the deportation
- Number of people executed: circa. 100
- Origin of victims: residents of Tomaszów Lubelski
- Names, ages, professions and addresses: Cukier, Fereszt, Katz, Stempel, Blan Szandel with children, several ages, other names unknown.
4. Do we know what the victims were accused of, or was the killing an order of reprisal or other? Racial motive: they were Jews.
5. Who carried out the execution: Gendarmerie
6. Are the names of the perpetrators known? L. (dead), P., S. (dead), D. (dead).
7. Were the bodies burned? Or destroyed in some other way? Where were they buried? Buried in separated, or collective graves.
8. Where were the bodies buried? In the site of execution.
9. Description of the grave: victims buried in mass or individual graves.
10. Was the grave exhumed? No."
[IPN GK 163/18, pp.1167, Questionnaire on Mass Executions and Mass Graves in the Lublin Voivodeship, Tomaszów Lubelski district. Based on the testimony of Stanislaw Jedzrzejewski].
Tomaszów Lubelski is a town in the Lublin Voivodeship in eastern Poland, located approximately 123 km (76 miles) southeast of Lublin.
The earliest reference to Jews in Tomaszów Lubelski dates back to the early 17th century, when a town charter granted Jewish residents exemption from the obligation to repair the dikes, but they were forbidden to own more than 12 houses in the market square. However, the Jews soon purchased most of the houses in the square and developed their activities in trade, brokering, and artisanal activities. The first synagogue in Tomaszów was built during this period, and the Jewish cemetery was established in the eastern part of the town near the Sołokija River.
The emerging Jewish community was devastated in the mid-17th century, first by Chmielnicki’s Cossacks and then by the Swedish army. The Jewish quarter, including the synagogue complex, was destroyed. According to data from 1700, of the 205 Jewish families that had lived there, only 18 remained. In the 18th century, the community revived. Most Jews earned their livelihood through small trade, brokering, alcohol sales, and crafts.
In the 19th century, the Jewish community grew rapidly, from 1,863 inhabitants in 1856 to 3,646 in 1897, out of a total population of 6,000 (approximately 60%). During the interwar period, the town’s Jewish population peaked at 5,500, making up more than half of Tomaszów Lubelski’s population. Most Jews worked as merchants and craftsmen, particularly in the clothing industry and in a foundry. The Jewish community operated a synagogue, a Beth Midrash, mutual aid associations, and charitable and cultural societies. Tomaszów Lubelski was also an important Hasidic center, where rabbis from various courts gathered. Zionist parties and pioneer movements were active there, as well as Agudath Israel and the Bund.
On the eve of the war in August 1939, between 6,000 and 7,000 Jews lived in Tomaszów, comprising about half of the town’s 13,000 inhabitants.
The German bombardment of Tomaszów Lubelski on September 7 and 9, 1939, caused numerous casualties among the Jewish residents and significant material destruction in the town, including the synagogue and approximately 500 houses in the Jewish quarter. When Wehrmacht units initially occupied Tomaszów Lubelski from September 13 to 25, 1939, Jewish residents were immediately subjected to violence and humiliation. In mid-September, the Germans carried out the first mass killing, executing six Jews, and rounded up many Jewish men, sending them, along with approximately 25,000 Polish soldiers, to the POW camp in Sieniawa. The Red Army briefly occupied the town at the end of September 1939 but was forced to evacuate on October 8, 1939, allowing about 4,000 local Jews (approximately 75% of the town’s Jewish population), including the last rabbi of Tomaszów, Arie Lejb Rubin, to leave the town.
When German forces definitively took control of Tomaszów in October 1939, they began systematically persecuting the remaining 3,000 Jews in the town. They were subjected to anti-Jewish measures, including the requirement to wear a Star of David armband, property confiscation, and forced labor. In early 1940, the Jews were ordered to form a Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Germans resettled the Tomaszów Jews to an area around Piekarska Street, where by October 1940, between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews lived. The Jewish inhabitants were used by the Germans as forced laborers to repair war damage, build border fortifications, improve the road to Bełżec, or work in agriculture.
According to local witnesses, a gendarmerie post was established in Tomaszów, and an SS regiment of several dozen soldiers was stationed in the town. Polish police (Granatowa) also continued to operate.
In 1940, the Germans destroyed the Jewish cemetery, blew up the remains of the synagogue, and used the bricks and rubble to pave the street leading to the high school building, which housed the Gestapo headquarters. The beit midrash and other community buildings were also destroyed. According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, between 20 and 30 Jews, including men and women, were killed at the beginning of the German occupation. The victims were led to a wasteland near the town’s mill, where they were shot with machine guns and pistols before being buried on the spot. In the spring of 1941, a group of mentally and physically handicapped Jews and Christians was murdered in the town.
In February 1942, about 700 Tomaszów Jews were resettled to the labor camp in nearby Cieszanów, where most of them died. From spring 1942, as part of Operation Reinhardt in the General
Government, deportations became systematic. During this period, the Gestapo killed Szyja Fiszelzon, the head of the Judenrat, for refusing to provide a list of potential deportees. According to local witnesses, the Judenrat’s premises in the former Jewish school on Krasnobrodzka Street, as well as the square in front of the school, became gathering points for Jews from the surrounding area brought to Tomaszów before deportation.
On May 22, 1942, the Gestapo of the Tomaszów and Zamość districts ordered all the Jews, including the local ones, to assemble in the square. Under the guard of Polish auxiliary policemen, the sick and elderly were separated, killed by the Germans, and buried on the spot. At the same time, about 200 young Jewish men and women, deemed fit for work, were selected and confined in the unfenced ghetto, which was established in the wooden barracks on Piekarska and Lwowska Streets. The remaining Jews were loaded into trucks, transported to Bełżec, and gassed upon arrival.
Among the 200 Jews who remained in Tomaszów, some were subjected to forced labor by the Gestapo or the gendarmerie, while others emptied the homes of the newly deported. A number of detainees were sent to work on larger farms and estates of German settlers, including in Werachanie.
On October 27, 1942, the gendarmes and the Polish Auxiliary Police liquidated the Tomaszów ghetto. About 100 Jews who tried to evade the roundup were killed in a mass execution at the Jewish cemetery. Other Jews remaining in the town, including the Jewish inhabitants of Bełżec who had been imprisoned in Tomaszów in August 1942, were transported to Bełżec and gassed upon arrival. The Jews who worked at the Werachanie estate were executed on the same day.
According to local eyewitnesses, many Jews who had been hiding in the town during the liquidation of the ghetto and in the days and weeks that followed were progressively caught, killed by the Germans, and buried in the Jewish cemetery. A large pit remained open for several days to receive the victims as they were brought in.
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