1 Killing site(s)
Mieczyslaw F., born in 1923: "There were several deportations of Jews from Turobin. Families were rounded up and marched to Izbica. Elderly people were transported in carts requisitioned by the sołtys (village head). Some wealthier Jews managed to hide by paying local peasants, but the poorest had no choice but to comply. When the last group of Jews had left for Izbica, a strange calm settled over the town, and I stepped outside. We young people were curious, eager to see what was happening. Suddenly, we heard the cry of a child. I saw a policeman from the Granatowa (Polish Blue Police) passing by, and the sound was coming from a nearby Jewish house. Inside was a baby in a cradle, left behind by its mother—she had no choice but to abandon it during the deportation. The Granatowy policeman entered the house and shot the child. Afterward, Polish villagers were requisitioned to transport the remaining belongings of the Jews to Izbica. Hoping to earn a little money, I volunteered twice to haul carts filled with the possessions they had left behind." [Testimony N°YIU816P, interviewed in Turobin, on June 13, 2018]
- "Court inquiries about executions and mass graves
1. Date and place of execution: May 1942
2. Type of execution (shooting, hanging or other): shooting;
3. Personal data on the executed victims: Jews; Number of executed victims: 120 Jews; Origin of the victims: -
Names, Age, profession, address: unknown
4. Perpetrators of the execution: three SS-men
5. Names [of the perpetrators: Kurt Engels and Ludwig Klemm from Izbica, district of Krasnystaw.
6. Were the bodies burned or destroyed in any way? No
7. Where were bodies buried? At the local Jewish cemetery in Turobin, in five mass graves (each with a twenty bodies). [GK 163/13, pp. 297 – 297 rev.]
- "In October 1942 in Olszanka, 10 members of the of the Turbin Judenrat were shot. The bodies of the victims were buried at the Jewish cemetery in two graves. [Protocol of the Court Municipal in Turobin, September 26, 1945; IPN 337 E 1123]
Turobin is a town in Biłgoraj County in eastern Poland, located approximately 31 km (19 miles) north of Biłgoraj and 49 km (30 miles) south of the regional capital, Lublin.
Jewish settlement in Turobin began at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. By 1564, around 60 Jewish families lived in the town, primarily engaged in the fur and leather trade, handicrafts, and tavern or innkeeping. In 1648, during the invasion by Khmelnytsky’s Cossacks, the town was destroyed, and some members of the Jewish community were killed.
In the second half of the 17th century, the Jewish community was reestablished and experienced steady growth: from 160 individuals in 1662 (22% of the town’s population), to 951 in 1857 (40%), and finally 2,294 in 1904, making up 72.1% of the population.
A new brick synagogue was constructed in 1825, and a new cemetery was established outside the town limits. By the end of the 19th century, Jewish residents had opened leatherworking and backyard weaving workshops. However, difficult economic conditions prompted many to emigrate.
World War I brought severe destruction to Turobin, along with widespread impoverishment. Anti-Jewish incidents were also recorded during this time.
Despite the challenges of the interwar period, Turobin’s Jewish community maintained vibrant political and cultural life. Zionist parties, the Jewish Labor Bund, and the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael were all active. Numerous modern social and cultural organizations operated under the umbrella of these political movements.
In 1921, Turobin had 965 Jewish residents, comprising 60% of the town’s population. By 1939, the Jewish population had grown to approximately 1,500.
German forces first occupied Turobin on September 18, 1939, before briefly surrendering it to the Soviets. In October 1939, the Germans reoccupied the town when the Red Army withdrew, along with approximately 100 young Jews who had fled eastward. Shortly thereafter, a gendarmerie and a police station were established in Turobin.
At the beginning of the German occupation, the Jewish population retained limited freedoms. A local witness recalled that Jews were initially allowed to move freely within the town and continue their trade. By December 1939, Turobin had become a site of forced resettlement for Jews from other regions of occupied Poland. That year, around 1,250 Jews arrived from Łódź, Koło, Konin, and Słupsk. In March 1941, some 500 Jews from Lublin were also relocated to the town, followed by several hundred more from nearby towns and villages in 1942. By the winter of that year, the Jewish population in Turobin had swelled to approximately 4,000. Many of the displaced were housed in buildings surrounding the marketplace, including the synagogue and other communal facilities.
Although Turobin did not have a designated ghetto, the German authorities established a local Judenrat (Jewish Council) and Jewish police force in early 1940.
A local witness remembered that Jews, including the town’s rabbi, were assigned to clean the streets and subjected to public humiliation. Poor sanitary conditions led to a typhus epidemic in the winter of 1940, which claimed many lives. In June 1940, 200 individuals were sent from Turobin to a forced labor camp near Lublin. Later, groups of Jewish laborers were sent to Zamość for six months of land reclamation work, and in 1941, others were deported to a labor camp in Rawa Ruska to dig anti-tank trenches.
By the summer of 1941, the situation had worsened dramatically. Jews were forbidden from leaving the town without special permission, food became increasingly scarce, and starvation soon set in.
The first major deportation from Turobin took place on either May 12 or 14, 1942, when approximately 2,700 Jews were rounded up and taken to the Krasnystaw railway station. From there, they were deported to the Sobibor death camp. Polish archives also report that around 120 Jews were killed that same month by three SS men from Izbica. According to a local witness, one afternoon in May, a group of Jews captured in the town were locked in a Jewish house. German soldiers threw grenades into the building; those who survived the explosions were killed with automatic rifles. The witness confirmed that a Jewish man named Jancik survived and fled to Izbica. The bodies of the victims were later collected by cart and buried in five mass graves at the Jewish cemetery.
The final Aktion in Turobin occurred in October 1942, carried out by Police Battalion 67. It resulted in the deportation of the town’s remaining Jewish population to the ghetto in Izbica and, subsequently, to the Sobibor death camp. The deportees, including children and elderly individuals, were transported the 35 kilometers to Izbica by horse-drawn wagons and on foot.
Before this final deportation, a group of 10 Judenrat members was taken to the nearby Olszanka forest and executed. Their bodies were returned to Turobin by wagon and buried in the Jewish cemetery.
According to a local witness, after the deportees had left the town, a Granatowy (Blue) Polish policeman shot a Jewish infant who had been left behind in one of the now-empty Jewish homes. The burial place of the child remains unknown.
The former Jewish cemetery in Turobin—where at least 130 Jews killed during the German occupation are buried—was turned into farmland during the 1980s. To this day, it remains unmarked and without commemoration.
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