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1 Killing site(s)
Jadwiga H., born in 1927: “The Germans were not permanently stationed in Kamionka; they only came occasionally from Lubartów and passed through the village. Once, when the Jews were forbidden to leave their homes, I was at the tailor shop with my mother and saw an elderly Jewish woman being shot in the marketplace. Her husband was also shot when he ran to her. Both were killed by the Germans who were passing through the village in a car that day. The Jewish community retrieved their bodies and buried them in the Jewish cemetery.” [Testimony N°YIU904P, interviewed in Kamionka on August 20, 2018]
Kamionka is a town in eastern Poland, located 26 km (16 miles) north of Lublin and 10 km (6 miles) west of Lubartów. The earliest preserved records of Jews in Kamionka date back to 1598. By the early 18th century, Jews had begun leasing the town’s breweries and hams, gradually becoming its main merchants. The local Jewish community experienced rapid demographic growth in the 19th century, with most Jewish residents living around the market square. They primarily earned their livelihoods through trade and handicrafts, with a smaller group engaged in agriculture.
The Kamionka synagogue was built in the early 19th century, and the Jewish cemetery was established in the 1860s. According to the 1921 census, 556 Jews lived in Kamionka, representing 24.6% of the total population. The community owned a synagogue, a beit ha-midrash, a mikveh, a ritual slaughterhouse, as well as a Jewish library and a Hebrew school, both of which were opened in the 1920s.
A local witness interviewed by Yahad recalled pre-war Kamionka and its Jewish residents, including her Jewish classmates. Among them were Sija and his daughter Rojze, Pinek, who owned a hardware store, and Mosiek, who rented the witness’s family orchard. Despite the widespread anti-Semitism among certain segments of the town’s population, some local Poles maintained good neighborly and business relations with the Jewish community.
According to some sources, approximately 430 Jews lived in Kamionka on the eve of the Second World War in 1939.
Kamionka was occupied by German troops on September 19, 1939. Shortly afterward, anti-Jewish measures were implemented in the village, requiring Jews to perform forced labor and wear armbands bearing the Star of David. Although no closed ghetto was established in Kamionka, Jews were eventually forbidden from leaving their homes, which were concentrated in the town center around the market square. According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, isolated murders of Jews found outside their homes were carried out by Germans stationed in the nearby town of Lubartów. In 1940 or 1941, an elderly Jewish couple was shot dead by the Germans in the village center and later buried in the Jewish cemetery by other Jewish residents.
Between 1940 and 1942, approximately 300 Jews from Mławy, Slovakia, and presumably France were deported to Kamionka, increasing the Jewish population to 651 by January 1942. In October 1942, a deportation Aktion was conducted in Kamionka by the Germans and the Polish Granatowa police. Local Jews, along with those from surrounding villages such as Firlej, Ostrów, and Tarło, were taken to the Lubartów ghetto. According to Polish archives, on October 11, 1942, around 300 Jews, including deportees from Kamionka, were shot and buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lubartów. On the same day, over 4,000 Jews—including 3,034 from Lubartów, 661 from Kamionka, and 325 from Firlej—were taken to the Lubartów train station. They were loaded into overcrowded wagons and deported to the Treblinka death camp.
After the deportation Aktion, some Jews from Kamionka went into hiding in the surrounding fields and forests. Others were helped and sheltered by local Poles. A group of Jewish partisans also organized in the forest. In the following months, Jewish fugitives were systematically hunted by Germans, the Polish Granatowa police, and other Polish groups.
According to a Yahad witness, a Jewish girl around 15 years old, Ita Rajs, was caught by a Polish man who raped and murdered her. Polish archives indicate that in the fall of 1942 or 1943, during a large-scale Aktion to capture Jewish fugitives, around 70 Jews hiding in the forest were found and killed.
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