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1 Killing site(s)
Wieslaw M., born in 1931: "I went to see the bodies of Jews who had been shot in Antopol. We traveled by bicycle along the road from Nałęczów to Lublin. When we arrived in Bochotnica, I was surprised to see that no one was there—it was completely deserted. On the other side of the road, I saw bodies lying by the roadside. They were face down on the ground. There were six or seven people: three children and three or four adults. I know they were buried right where I saw them, between two trees. It’s also known that their bodies were exhumed in the 1950s.” [Testimony N°YIU902P, interviewed in Nałęczów, on August 18, 2018]
"I worked as a coachman at the Antopol estate, which had been taken over by the Germans. In 1942, the Germans brought 40 Jewish men and women to the estate. These Jews came from neighboring villages, including Kurów, Markuszów, and Nałęczów. They were housed in a single building on the estate and were assigned to work in the fields. There were no Germans guarding them, and they were not under constant surveillance.
I remember that after the harvest in 1943, some Germans in green uniforms arrived by car. They forced 16 people—men, women, and children—out of the building where the Jews lived. The Germans drove them along the road from Nałęczów to Lublin, and after about 500 meters, ordered them to lie face down in a ditch and shot them with machine guns. After the execution, the Germans instructed us to dig a pit near the road and bury the bodies. We dug the pit right behind the ditch, measuring 3 meters wide, 2 meters long, and 3 meters deep.
A few days after this execution, more Germans arrived at the estate, dressed in similar green uniforms. They surrounded the property and demanded to know where the Jews were. The Germans went to every work post and killed the Jews they found. I remember that young Jewish women were sitting in the courtyard of the manor. The Germans asked an elderly gardener if the women were Jewish or Polish. The gardener, unwilling to betray them, said nothing. The Germans ordered the women to undress, took them out to the park, and made them stand on the rose depot. They shot the women there.
Two Jewish men had hidden in the forge, but the Germans found them, took them outside, and shot them. After these executions, the Germans left, instructing the estate administrator to oversee the digging of graves and the burial of the bodies. The corpses were buried in various places in the fields of Antopol, approximately 2 km from Nałęczów. We dug a mass grave in the park, where we buried four Jewish women and two Jewish men.
The Germans who carried out the shootings were gendarmes from Puławy. In total, after the harvest in 1943, the Germans killed 40 people at the estate, including men, women, and children. However, I don’t remember the exact number of each.” [Testimony of Stanislaw Boczek, born in 1904, collected in Puławy on February 12, 1971; IPN-OKL, Ds. 46/71/Pł. p. 1, 7, 8, 15]
Antopol is a locality in the administrative district of Gmina Nałęczów, within Puławy County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is located approximately 4 km (2 miles) east of Nałęczów, 26 km (16 miles) southeast of Puławy, and 22 km (14 miles) west of the regional capital, Lublin.
Today, Antopol is part of Bochotnica-Kolonia. Historically, it was established as an estate centered around a 19th-century manor house. The Antopol estate was predominantly inhabited by Poles, while a thriving Jewish community of about 300 people lived in the nearby town of Nałęczów, just 4 km away.
Bochotnica and Antopol came under German occupation in mid-September 1939. According to Polish archives, the Antopol estate was subsequently taken over by the Germans. In 1942, 40 Jewish forced laborers from nearby localities such as Kurów, Markuszów, and Nałęczów were transferred to Antopol. Other sources mention the establishment of a labor camp for Jews in Antopol in 1943, which housed approximately 60 Jewish workers assigned to agricultural tasks and maintaining a fruit tree nursery. Over the duration of the camp’s existence, up to 100 people are believed to have passed through it.
In late summer or early autumn of 1943, two Aktions were carried out on the Antopol estate by a German gendarmerie unit from Puławy. During the first Aktion, 16 Jews—including men, women, and children—were forced out of the estate buildings and shot in a field near the road connecting Nałęczów to Lublin. Polish workers were ordered to dig a pit at the killing site to bury the victims. According to two local witnesses interviewed by Yahad, the bodies were exhumed in the 1950s.
A few days after the first Aktion, a second killing operation took place on the Antopol estate. During this Aktion, all the remaining Jewish workers were executed by the Germans. The victims’ bodies were buried in multiple pits dug in the fields of Antopol. Sources estimate that, following the harvest of 1943, between 40 and 60 Jews were killed in total during the two Aktions in Antopol.
Additionally, beginning in 1942, a camp for Soviet POWs was established on the grounds of the Antopol estate. Many prisoners died of exhaustion and starvation, and their bodies were buried in the surrounding woods.
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