1 Killing site(s)
Franciszka P., born in 1927: "This Jewish boy ran away, and the German soldier chased him down and caught him. The boy was crying. It was terrible. His parents were standing where they were to be shot, next to our neighbor’s barn, waiting for their fate. When they brought the boy back, they tied up his parents and laid them on the ground. The Germans told them, ’You’ll stay like this until morning,’ but they shot them right away. The poppies were in bloom; it must have been July. The German gendarmes from the Teratyn post were the ones who did this. There were two of them, and they arrived in a cart around 11 in the morning." [Testimony N°YIU419P, interviewed in Janki, on March 22, 2015]
"Janki - a Jewish family of 9 was shot in Autumn 1941 [locality of Iwanki] 3 km from the bus stop, a Jewish family of 3 was shot in Autumn 1942 500 meters from the bus stop.” [Report cards filled out by scouts documenting places of combat or martyrdom during the WWII in the Hrubieszów County, established in 1965; IPN GK 195/VIII/7, pp. 67 – 67 rev.]
Janki is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Horodło, located in Hrubieszów County in eastern Poland. It is situated approximately 18 km (11 miles) west of Horodło on the Ukrainian border, 11 km (6 miles) from the county seat of Hrubieszów, and 100 km (62 miles) southeast of the regional capital, Lublin.
According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, only one Jewish family of three lived in Janki before the war. However, a significant Jewish community thrived in the nearby town of Hrubieszów.
After the outbreak of war and a brief occupation by Soviet troops, Janki came under German control in early October 1939. Although German troops were not permanently stationed in Janki, a German gendarmerie post was established in nearby Teratyn, located 7 km away. According to a witness interviewed by Yahad, German gendarmes regularly inspected the village, where partisan activity was particularly intense.
In 1942, during the summer or fall, gendarmes from Teratyn came to the village and killed three members of the Jewish family residing there. The Yahad eyewitness reported that two gendarmes first chased a young boy and then gathered the entire family near a barn before shooting them with machine guns. The bodies of the victims were subsequently buried in a pit dug by the owner of the field where the shooting occurred.
The killing site is in a private field and is not commemorated.
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