1 Killing site(s)
Marian S., born in 1929: "I was herding cows with some friends when we saw a group of around 15 Russian POWs accompanied by Germans, who ordered them to dig a pit. The pit was square-shaped. Later, when we were back in the village, we heard gunfire. The Germans were ensuring that no one approached the area near the pit. The shots came from a machine gun, not single shots. The Jews murdered there had been brought from Grójec and Słomczyn. Their bodies were buried the same night. There is now a memorial, but it does not mark the exact location of the pit. After the war, the bodies were exhumed." (Testimony N°YIU539P, interviewed in Dębówka, on October 3, 2015)
"60 Jews shot in May 1943." [Court Inquiries about executions and mass graves in districts, provinces, camps and ghettos=Ankieta Sadow Grodzkich, 1945 Reel 13 FILE 43]
Dębówka is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Góra Kalwaria, within Piaseczno County in the Masovian Voivodeship of east-central Poland. It is located approximately 4 km (2 miles) southwest of Góra Kalwaria and 31 km (19 mi) south of Warsaw. Before the Second World War, Dębówka was a Polish village with no Jewish residents. In contrast, a vibrant Jewish community thrived in the town of Grójec, approximately 35 km (21.7 mi) to the southwest.
Dębówka was occupied by German forces in September 1939, along with the rest of Masovia. Unlike nearby towns such as Góra Kalwaria, where ghettos were established, Dębówka had no pre-war Jewish population. However, the village became the site of a mass killing of Jewish craftsmen from the Słomczyn labor camp in 1943.
In 1940, a group of Jewish men was deported from Grójec to Słomczyn, where they were forced to construct a military airfield in preparation for the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The airfield’s construction continued until June 1941. According to the account of a local witness interviewed by Yahad - In Unum, after the liquidation of the Słomczyn labor camp in November 1942, the Jewish laborers were transferred to Chynów, a village approximately 9 km (5.6 miles) from Dębówka, where they continued to perform forced labor.
On the evening of July 14, 1943 (though some sources suggest May 1943), these Jewish laborers were transported by truck to Dębówka, where they were shot and buried in a pit dug in advance by Soviet POWs on the outskirts of the village. The killing site was located in a sandy area beyond the meadows, near a pine forest. Those who attempted to flee were pursued and killed. The Aktion was carried out by German forces with assistance from requisitioned Polish villagers.
A monument commemorating the victims killed in Dębówka in 1943 was erected approximately 20 meters from the pit. In 1948, the victims’ bodies were exhumed and reburied in the Jewish cemetery in Grójec. While Polish archives place the number of victims at 60, other sources indicate that 80 human remains were discovered during the exhumation process.
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