Chodel | Lublin

Destruction of Jews in Chodel

2 Killing site(s)

Kind of place before:

Jewish cemetery (1), Field (1)

Memorials:

No

Period of occupation:

1939-1944

Number of victims:

Several hundreds

Witness interview

Aleksander P., born in 1934: "One day, during the harvest, Jews were working in the fields of the Radlin estate. Two Germans from Ratoszyn arrived in a cart and ordered the landowner to summon the Jewish workers. The Jews were then herded into a barn. One by one, they were escorted in pairs behind the barn and shot by the Germans. In total, around 30 to 40 Jews were killed that day. One of the Jews, named Mosiek, managed to escape, but the Germans forced a local Pole to catch him and bring him back. Eventually, Mosiek was also shot. After the killings, the Germans ordered the corpses to be buried and then left. [Testimony N°YIU891P, interviewed in Radlin on August 14, 2018]

Historical note

Chodel is a town in eastern Poland, located 35 km (22 miles) southwest of Lublin. The earliest record of Jewish presence in Chodel dates to 1787, when the town had 31 Jewish residents. However, large-scale Jewish settlement began in the mid-19th century. By then, Chodel’s population of 590 included 123 Jews, who worked as merchants, financial intermediaries, and craftsmen.

By 1860, a private beit ha-midrash and mikvah were established, and in the late 1860s, one of the community buildings was converted into a synagogue. Around the same time, a Jewish cemetery was established in the northern part of the town. In the 1890s, a new mikvah was constructed.

By 1910, Jews made up 40% of Chodel’s population and earned their livelihoods from grain trading, market stalls, and various crafts. These included a saddler, a tinsmith, three men’s and six women’s tailors, eight shoemakers, four carpenters, several bakers, four glassblowers, and a feldsher (a medical practitioner). A beit ha-midrash was established in 1915.

During the First World War, much of the town’s Jewish infrastructure, including the synagogue and most Jewish homes and shops, was destroyed. According to the 1921 census, Chodel had 646 Jewish residents, representing 47% of the town’s total population of 1,362. At that time, the Jewish community owned a synagogue, two beit ha-midrash, a mikvah, a ritual slaughterhouse, and a cemetery. Two Jewish-owned tanneries operated in the town, belonging to Hersz Hochsztejn and Samuel Knoploch, along with five kosher butcher shops. Several Jewish political parties were active, and a Zionist-Revisionist youth organization was founded in the 1930s.

By August 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Chodel was home to 776 Jews, comprising nearly half of the town’s population.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

Chodel was occupied by German troops on September 16, 1939, which immediately led to persecution and arbitrary violence against the Jewish population. According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, at the very beginning of the war in 1939, two Jewish women, presumably from the nearby village of Budzyn, were wounded by the Germans in Chodel. They were taken to the Jewish cemetery, where they succumbed to their injuries. Other isolated shootings of Chodel’s Jewish residents were carried out by Germans during the occupation. From the onset of the war, Jews were subjected to forced labor, including agricultural work on nearby estates that were converted into labor camps.

In January 1940, a Jewish Council (Judenrat) was established in Chodel. Sources suggest that an open ghetto, or Jewish residential area, was created around 1941. The Jewish population, concentrated near the synagogue, steadily increased as Chodel was designated a Judensammelort (Jewish gathering point) by the German administration. Jews began arriving from other areas, including Puławy at the end of 1939, followed by deportees from Łódź, Warsaw, and nearby towns in 1940. Several waves of resettlements occurred in 1941, particularly from Kraków and Lublin, doubling the Jewish population to 1,446 individuals by 1941. In June 1942, additional Jews expelled from Saxony arrived in Chodel. This overcrowding, combined with severe food shortages and disease outbreaks—including a typhus epidemic in July 1941—resulted in over 300 deaths in the ghetto between May 1941 and May 1942.

Despite these dire conditions, the Jewish Social Self-Help (JSS) and the Judenrat attempted to provide meals to the needy and organize mass shelters for homeless deportees during the harsh winter of 1941.

Local witnesses confirm the presence of a German gendarmerie post in Chodel, along with a detention center called Koza, located in the pre-war school building. Another site of repression was the nearby Ratoszyn estate, 4 km from Chodel, which served as the headquarters of the local Oberleitung (estate complex). According to witnesses, the SS colonel in charge was particularly brutal toward the Jews. In 1941 or 1942, during the harvest season, two Germans from Ratoszyn went to the Radlin estate, where about 40 Jews—likely from Chodel—were working in the fields. The landowner, accused of failing to meet formal employment requirements for Jews, was ordered to gather the Jewish workers, including men, women, and children, in a barn. The victims were then called out in pairs and shot by the Germans. Witnesses report that the bodies were buried in two pits at the site of the killings.

Deportations from Chodel began in 1940, starting with the expulsion of 100 to 300 Jewish men to a labor camp in Józefów. This was followed by the forced transfer of 50 Jewish men to fortification works in Bełżec. Deportations continued in May 1942, with approximately 100 Jews transferred to the Opole Lubelskie ghetto and likely from there to the Poniatowa labor camp. Some sources, including the Ringelblum Archive, suggest that a mass shooting occurred in Chodel during the first week of May 1942, resulting in numerous deaths. However, this claim has not been confirmed by local witnesses interviewed by Yahad.

The Chodel ghetto was liquidated on September 21 or October 2, 1942. The remaining Jews were likely transferred to Bełżyce before being transported by train from Niedrzwica Duża to the Sobibór  death camp or Bełżec death camp.

Nearby villages

• Bełżyce
• Poniatowa.

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