1 Killing site(s)
Edward Sh., born in 1936: "I saw the Germans forcing the Jews to march forward, lining them up two by two. There was a German soldier on each side of the column, with a total of two Germans on foot and another five or six accompanying them in carts. Among the Jews being marched was a boy I knew well, Szlama [Rubinsztajn]. He was older than me, perhaps around 15 years old. He walked alongside his father, holding his hand. The victims were taken to the forest. One of the Germans carried an automatic rifle. I didn’t witness the shooting, but I heard the gunfire." [Testimony N°YIU258P, interviewed in Rozwadówka, on October 20, 2013]
Rozwadówka is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Sosnówka, within Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately 4 km (2 miles) west of Sosnówka, 34 km (21 miles) south of Biała Podlaska, and 75 km (47 miles) northeast of the regional capital, Lublin.
According to local witnesses interviewed by Yahad - In Unum, Rozwadówka was home to about 20 Jewish families before the Second World War. Most members of the Jewish community earned their livelihoods as craftsmen and merchants, with one exception: Mendel, who was the only Jewish farmer in the village. The Jewish residents of Rozwadówka had a prayer house and were part of the synagogue community in nearby Wisznice, where the Jewish cemetery was located.
The Germans occupied Rozwadówka and the entire Wisznice district on September 21–22, 1939, but quickly handed control to the Red Army. However, the Soviets withdrew on October 6, leaving the Wisznice district under permanent German occupation.
The plight of the Jews in Rozwadówka was closely tied to the oppressive German presence in Wisznice, where a gendarmerie post and units of Ukrainian collaborators and the Polish (Blue) Police were stationed to control the region. This area was a key zone for Polish armed resistance, and according to local witnesses interviewed by Yahad, the Wisznice gendarmes carried out violent anti-Jewish actions and pacification operations in villages throughout the district.
On December 15, 1941, the Wisznice gendarmes executed hostages in Rozwadówka to intimidate the local population and deter support for the resistance. Learning of the Jewish residents in the village, they chose them as victims. An eyewitness recounted that nine Jewish inhabitants and one Polish man were rounded up and marched to the nearby forest, where the gendarmes executed them. The Jewish victims were buried in a pit dug at the killing site by requisitioned Poles, while the Polish man was buried separately in the Catholic cemetery.
Beginning on January 28, 1942, the remaining Jews of Rozwadówka, along with Jews from nearby localities such as Motwica and Czeputka—138 individuals in total—were forcibly relocated to the Wisznice ghetto. This ghetto was liquidated at the end of September 1942, with most of its inmates deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. The remaining Jews were executed in November 1942.
A witness interviewed by Yahad recounted the tragic deaths of three additional Jewish victims in the Rozwadówka forest: a mother and her two young children who had escaped the Wisznice ghetto and hidden in the woods. During the winter, they were betrayed and killed by Wisznice gendarmes, who destroyed their shelter with a grenade, killing all three inside.
In 2016, a memorial stone was erected by the Lasting Memory Foundation to honor the Jewish residents of Rozwadówka murdered in December 1941. The stone, placed near the burial site, bears the names of the victims: Rywin and Szlama Rubensztajn, Jankiel, Abram, Mendel, and Mojsze Tenenbaum, Jankiel and Rywin Zylbersztajn, and Hereszek Zelazo.
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