1 Killing site(s)
Maria C., born in 1932: "I saw the Jews marching in a column, led by the Germans. They were moving quickly, hurried along by the soldiers. The pit had been dug behind the Jewish cemetery on an elevated area. I don’t know why they chose such a high location; perhaps there was no more space in the cemetery. I saw everything from the window. It was May or June, and everything was green. There were several Germans, maybe a dozen. The Jewish men were positioned in front of the pit, and the Germans shot at them from behind with machine guns. It all happened very quickly. We didn’t have time to realize that the undertaker was already filling in the pit. He was a Polish man, quite elderly, who made his living this way.” [Testimony N°YIU417P, interviewed in Uchanie, on March 21, 2015]
"At about 3 p.m. I saw the Germans shoot 40 elderly Jews in the Jewish cemetery. They led them near my house, then to the kierkut [Jewish cemetery], and there they lined them up over a pit, ten at a time, and several Germans fired shots at them with automatic pistols. The bodies of the murdered were buried by other, younger Jews whom the Germans had brought with shovels. The Jews dug a large hole and then buried the dead. I saw the murder of 40 Jews from a distance of about 100 meters." [IPN Lu 284/467 t. 2]
Uchanie is a town in the Lublin Voivodeship, Hrubieszów District, in eastern Poland, located approximately 88 kilometers (55 miles) southeast of Lublin.
The earliest reference to Jews in Uchanie dates back to the early 17th century, but the local Jewish community was likely established much earlier, with its own cemetery as early as the 16th century. During that time, Jewish merchants lived in the town, trading in grain and handicrafts. Most resided in the center, near the marketplace, where a synagogue was presumably built in 1619.
In the 19th century, the Jewish community grew rapidly, increasing from 175 inhabitants in 1769 to 786 in 1856. By 1897, the Jewish population had reached 1,386, making up 70% of Uchanie’s total population. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, during and immediately after World War I, many Jews left Uchanie for larger cities in Poland or to settle abroad in Russia or the United States. Consequently, the Jewish population decreased to 1,010 (60% of the total population) by 1921.
The Jewish quarter developed in the center of the town, with most houses around the square occupied by Jewish craftsmen and merchants. During the interwar period, the Jewish community maintained a Beth Midrash, which likely served as a synagogue, along with a mikveh and a kosher slaughterhouse. The community also operated charitable and educational institutions, including the Linas ha-Cedek Brotherhood, founded in 1928, as well as the Tarbut Jewish Cultural and Educational Association and the Society of Friends of Working Palestine.
On the eve of the war in August 1939, between 1,450 and 1,700 Jews lived in Uchanie.
After the outbreak of war, Soviet troops first entered Uchanie in September 1939. However, in early October, the Red Army retreated, leaving the village under German control in accordance with the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Anti-Jewish measures were quickly implemented, subjecting the Jewish population of Uchanie to property confiscation, forced labor, and demands for substantial financial contributions in gold, silver, and other valuables. In early 1940, the Jews were ordered to form a Judenrat.
The Germans utilized the Jewish population as a labor force, requiring the Judenrat to provide a daily quota of forced laborers to work under grueling conditions on road repair projects or in agriculture. In June 1940, about 125 young Jewish men from Uchanie were sent to a labor camp in Obrowiec, near Hrubieszów, to dig canals.
In January 1941, the Jews of Uchanie and the surrounding area were herded into an open ghetto established around the streets of Cerkiewna, Cmentarna, and the Rynek (Main Square). It was strictly forbidden to leave the designated area, and those who attempted to escape starvation and disease were often shot and buried in the Jewish cemetery. In addition to the inhabitants of Uchanie, the ghetto included about 100 Jews from Kraków (resettled in November 1941) and approximately 680 Jews from Horodło (resettled in April 1942), as well as refugees from other towns, including around twenty families from Strzyżów.
According to a Yahad witness, a German gendarmerie post was established in the Uchanie manor house.
Between 1940 and 1943, several isolated killings of Jews were carried out in the town by gendarmes from Uchanie or Teratyn, most of which took place in the Jewish cemetery. Yahad witnesses report the execution of a young woman shot by a gendarme, as well as another incident in which two Jewish girls were killed in Uchanie by a group of Germans.
In May 1942, a division of SS officers arrived in Uchanie and conducted a mass execution of about 40 Jewish men. With the assistance of the local auxiliary police, they gathered the men in the town square and led them to a killing site located between the Jewish and Christian cemeteries. The killing squad then ordered them to lie down and shot them with a machine gun. The victims were buried in a pit that was filled in after the execution, either by young Jews who had been ordered to do so, as described in Polish archives, or by a Polish undertaker, as mentioned by an eyewitness interviewed by Yahad.
The liquidation of the ghetto began on June 10, 1942, and was carried out by the Germans. Most of the ghetto inmates were transported in wagons to the railway station in Miączyn near Zamość. There, young men were selected and sent to work in the village of Staszic near Uchanie and to a labor camp in Staw near Chełm, where they were murdered in the fall of 1942. The rest, about 1,650 people, were deported to the Sobibor extermination camp. The remaining Jews of the Uchanie ghetto, together with the Jews from the village of Grabowiec, were taken to Hrubieszów in October 1942 and deported to the Sobibór death camp on October 22, 1942, where they were exterminated in November of that year.
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