| Lublin Ghetto | |
|---|---|
 Two German soldiers in the Lublin Ghetto, May 1941 | |
| Also known as | German:Ghetto Lublin or Lublin Reservat |
| Location | Lublin,German-occupied Poland |
| Incident type | Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation, exile |
| Organizations | SS |
| Camp | deportations toBelzec extermination camp andMajdanek |
| Victims | 34,000 Polish Jews |
TheLublin Ghetto was aWorld War II ghetto created byNazi Germany in the city ofLublin on the territory ofGeneral Government inoccupied Poland.[1] The ghetto inmates were mostlyPolish Jews, although a number ofRoma were also brought in.[2] Set up in March 1941, the Lublin ghetto was one of the firstNazi-era ghettos slated for liquidation during the deadliest phase ofthe Holocaust in occupied Poland.[3] Between mid-March and mid-April 1942 over 30,000 Jews were delivered to their deathsin cattle trucks at theBełżec extermination camp and additional 4,000 atMajdanek.[1][4]
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Already in 1939–40, before the ghetto was officially pronounced, theSS and Police LeaderOdilo Globocnik (theSS district commander who also ran theJewish reservation), began to relocate the Lublin Jews further away from his staff headquarters at Spokojna Street,[5] and into a new city zone set up for this purpose. Meanwhile, the first 10,000 Jews had been expelled from Lublin to the rural surroundings of the city beginning in early March.[6]
The ghetto, referred to as the "Jewish quarter" (orWohngebiet der Juden), was formally opened a year later on 24 March 1941. The expulsion and ghettoization of the Jews was decided when the arrivingWehrmacht troops preparing for theOperation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, needed housing close to the newGerman–Soviet frontier.[6] The ghetto, the only one so far in theLublin District of theGeneral Government in 1941, was located around the area of the Podzamcze district, from the Grodzka Gate (renamed "Jewish Gate" to mark the boundary between the Jewish and non-Jewish sections of the city) and then along Lubartowska and Unicka streets, to the end of the Franciszkańska Street. Selected members of the prewar political parties such as the JewishBund in Poland were imprisoned in theLublin Castle and continued to carry out theirunderground activities from there.[7]
One widely feared collaborator was Szama (Shlomo) Grajer, owner of a Jewish restaurant and a brothel serving Nazis on Kowalska Street.[8] Grajer was aGestapo informer. Dressed like a German official, Grajer summoned to his restaurant a number of wealthy Jews and extracted a ransom of 20,000zlotys from each of them.[9] He also used to hunt for starving girls in the Ghetto for his Nazi brothel.[8] Grajer eventually cornered the daughter ofJudenrat president Marek Alten and married her. They were shot dead together during the final liquidation of Majdan.[8]
At the time of its establishment, the ghetto imprisoned 34,000Polish Jews,[1] and an unknown number ofRoma people. Virtually all of them were dead by the war's end. Most of the victims, about 30,000, were deported to theBelzec extermination camp (some of them through thePiaski ghetto) between 17 March and 11 April 1942 by theReserve Police Battalion 101 from Orpo helped bySchutzpolizei.[10] The Germans set a daily quota of 1,400 inmates to be deported to their deaths. The other 4,000 people were first moved to the Majdan Tatarski ghetto – a small ghetto established in the suburb of Lublin – and then either killed there during roundups or sent to the nearbyKL Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp.[1]
The last of the Ghetto's former residents still in German captivity were murdered at Majdanek andTrawniki camps inOperation Harvest Festival on 3 November 1943.[11] At the time of the liquidation of the ghetto, the German propaganda minister,Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary, "The procedure is pretty barbaric, and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews."[1]
After liquidating the ghetto, German authorities employed aslave labor workforce of inmates ofMajdanek to demolish and dismantle the area of the former ghetto, including in the nearby village ofWieniawa and the Podzamcze district. In a symbolic event, theMaharam's Synagogue (built in the 17th century in honor ofMeir Lublin) was blown up. Several centuries of Jewish culture and society in Lublin were brought to an end. The Jewish prewar population of 45,000 constituting about a third of the town's total population of 120,000 in 1939 was eradicated.[5][11]
A few individuals managed to escape the liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto and made their way to theWarsaw Ghetto, bringing the news of the Lublin destruction.[1] The eyewitness evidence convinced some Warsaw Jews that in fact, the Germans were intent onexterminating the whole of the Jewish population in Poland.[12] However, others, including head of theWarsaw'sJudenrat,Adam Czerniaków, at the time dismissed these reports of mass murders as "exaggerations".[3] Only 230 Lublin Jews are known to have survived the German occupation.
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