In October 1939, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, ordered the Polish and Jewish populations to be deported eastward from the annexed areas to the General Government. On 15 October 1941, mass deportations from Germany started. Deportations also began from other European countries.
German Jews from Hanau boarding a deportation train on 30 May 1942. The train passed through Lublin where men were selected to work in the Majdanek camp, and then continued on to the Sobibór death camp.
The logistics of the so-called ‘final solution of the Jewish question in Europe’ were discussed in detail at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. Various ministries and state organisations were involved in implementing the Europe-wide deportations, which were coordinated on an administrative level. The protocol of the conference is an important document underscoring the bureaucratic nature of the plan to murder the European Jews.
‘Anstelle der Auswanderung ist nunmehr als weitere Lösungsmöglichkeit nach entsprechender vorheriger Genehmigung durch den Führer die Evakuierung der Juden nach dem Osten getreten’.
‘As a further possible solution, and with the appropriate prior authorization by the Führer, emigration has now been replaced by evacuation of Jews to the East’.
Excerpt from the protocol of the Wannsee Conference, 20.01.1942, p. 5.
From the very beginning, deportation plans centred around the Lublin region. The German administration and railway company were responsible for the efficient transports – trains became part of the crime.
The transports from Westerbork to Sobibór began in March 1943. The first three transports were still in passenger wagons. When I was deported, we were in a wagon together with 62 people – old and young people, babies in prams. Still without violence, I have to say that again. We didn’t know where we were being deported to. We thought we had to work in Germany or in the East. That’s what we were told.
–
Jules Schelvis, born in 1921 in Amsterdam, recorded in 2007.
Displacement of the Jewish population from Lublin to other localities in the Lublin district, 1941.
Rajmund Krzyżewski’s Collection.
They drove everyone out of their houses, ordered them to sit on carts and the carts left Uchanie. The Jews were completely obedient, they went quietly, they had such bundles, not even a suitcase. They were taken away somewhere – at that time we didn’t know, because how could we know? Nobody came back from there. They were all my acquaintances, the Uchanie Jews.
–
Jerzy Skarżyński, born 1921 Uchanie, recorded 2016.
Deportation of Jews from the Uchanie ghetto, June 1942.
Photo: Jerzy Skarżyński. Jerzy Skarżyński’s Collection.
Extras:
Jules Schelvis
Jerzy Skarżyński
Rajmund Krzyżewski’s Collection
Jules Schelvis was born to a Jewish family in Amsterdam on 7 January 1921. He lived and worked in Amsterdam as a printer until 26 May 1943, when he was deported with his wife and family to the Westerbork camp, from which his journey began through various extermination, concentration and labour camps, including Sobibor, Dorohucza and Lublin. He was liberated by French troops at Vaihingen/Enz in southern Germany on 8 April 1945.
He returned to the Netherlands after the war and continued to work as a printer. It was not until thirty years after his terrible experience in the camps that he began to confront his history and the history of the Holocaust. He accompanied groups and students who studied the subject, speaking about the events of the Holocaust as one of the last witnesses and trying to promote remembrance. He published a book on the Sobibor death camp, which became one of the key works on the subject. He died in 2016.
Jerzy Skarżyński was born in Uchanie near Hrubieszów in 1921. His father, Aleksander Skarżyński, was a doctor and also president of the local Voluntary Fire Brigade. His mother, Stanisława Skarżyńska, née Piasecka, was a teacher. He had a brother, Ryszard, six years his junior. The family lived in Uchanie, in the house opposite the municipal office.
Jerzy began his education at the local primary school, and at the age of 13, was admitted to the 11th Śniadecki State Gimnazjum and Liceum in Lviv. He passed the gimnazjum school leaving exams in 1939.
The outbreak of WWII caught Jerzy on holiday in Uchanie. During the German occupation, he started working for the Hrubieszów Water Management Office, where he supervised, among other things, the regulation of the Wełnianka River. He witnessed the execution of a group of Uchanie Jews and the deportation of Jews from Uchanie in the summer of 1942, which he captured in three photographs.
Jerzy managed to escape his family from Uchanie before the German deportation action in January 1943. He ended up in Łochów, where he was employed in an agricultural machinery factory. Then he and his brother were deported to a forced labour camp in Berlin in 1944, where they worked at the Berlin-Westkreuz railway junction. There, he lived to see the end of the war. He returned to Poland in May 1945. His parents sold their house in Uchanie after the war and moved to the region of Żuławy.
Jerzy got married in 1945 and moved to Gdańsk. He worked on the reconstruction of the port, and then, among other things, became CEO of the CPN, or Polish state-owned petroleum company, deputy president of the Polish Automobile and Motorcycle Federation, reorganiser of the Warta Insurance Company and deputy commandant of the Fireighting Academy. He retired in 1981. He was active as a volunteer at the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation. He lived in Warsaw. He died in 2018.
Rajmund Krzyżewski’s Collection
On 26 October 2012, the ‘Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre’ Centre received five photographs depicting events that took place during the Holocaust in Lublin. The photographs were donated to the Centre by Mr Rajmund Krzyżewski from Bielsko-Biała, together with information about the circumstances in which they had been obtained.
An analysis of the photographs leads to the conclusion that the photographs probably depict the deportation of Jews from Lublin to the provinces. These events took place at the beginning of March 1941. Jewish residents of Lublin were resettled to provincial towns, including Bełżyce, Bychawa, Lubartów, Rejowiec and Żółkiew. The resettlement operation targeted mostly elderly and disabled people, as well as women and children. It started at 6 a.m. each day. Resettlement to some of the destination villages was done by horse-drawn carts.
The photographs record events that took place during the resettlement operation. One of its stages took place in the courtyard of the Potocki Palace at 3 Staszic Street. This building is visible in most of the photographs.
Rajmund Krzyżewski’s Collection