1 Killing site(s)
Stanisław K., born in 1926: "Many Jews sought refuge in the Parczew Forest, where they built three bunkers deep in the woods. One day, the Germans organized an Aktion to hunt down the Jews hiding there. When they arrived at the bunkers, they ordered those inside to come out, but no one obeyed. In response, the Germans threw a grenade into one of the bunkers, but the people inside managed to throw it back out. This happened twice, resulting in the deaths of two German soldiers. Enraged, the Germans blew up all three bunkers with the people still inside. Afterward, the sołtys (village head) was ordered to send locals to bury the bodies. Among those sent was a young boy. However, when he saw the aftermath of the explosions and the number of people killed, he fainted and had to be sent home."
[Testimony N°YIU273P, interviewed Dębowa Kłoda, on October 24, 2013]
"I remember the event that took place in the first days of December 1942 in the forest 8-10 km south of Parczew. The Ochoża estate was located on the territory of this forest. Many Jews and their families, including women and children, hid in the forest. They lived in underground shelters called bunkers. I don’t know how many Jews were hiding there, but according to the villagers there were several hundred of them. Most of them were from Parczew. Polish and Russian partisans also hid in the Parczew bunkers. [...] At the beginning of December, in the morning, many cars with gendarmes arrived in the village of Makuszka from the direction of Parczew. They transported small cannons and automatic weapons. I estimate that there were about 200 of them. [...]. This group carried out several sweeps of the forest, searching for Jews. They fired very powerful rifles and grenades. This action lasted several days, after which some of the cars went to Parczew, others to Ostrow, Kolechanie and Rudka Kijenska. Immediately after the end of the Aktion, a Gandarme came to see the Makuszka soltys and ordered him to organize the interment of the people killed. I wasn’t there, but my neighbors, Wladyslas S., Jan F. and Waclaw C., said there were a lot of corpses, mostly Jews. Some of the bodies in the bunkers were shredded. Men, women and children had been killed. They didn’t say exactly how many bodies were there, but they said a lot [...] The bodies were buried in the bunkers. [...] A few days later, the Germans surrounded the village of Bialka and killed some 96 people." [S 19/05/Zn, vol. 12, pp. 2204 – 2206; Testimony of Aleksander Skulimowski, born in 1899, resident of Makoszka, collected in Lublin, on October 8, 1975].
Ochoża is a village in Parczew County, Lublin Voivodeship, located in eastern Poland. It lies approximately 12 km (7 miles) east of Parczew and 50 km (31 miles) northeast of the regional capital, Lublin.
It is uncertain whether there were Jewish residents in Ochoża before the war. However, the nearby village of Parczew was home to approximately 5,000 Jews on the eve of the war. The Jewish community in Parczew, which dates back to the 16th century, had its own synagogue and cemetery.
In September 1939, the Parczew district was bombed by the German Air Force. After a brief occupation by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht entered Parczew on October 7, 1939. The Germans established a ghetto that housed around 7,000 Jews, including local Jews and expellees from Lubartów, Łódź, Kalisz, Poznań, and Lithuania. Most of the Jews gathered in the Parczew ghetto were deported and murdered in the Treblinka death camp during two major deportation Aktions in August and October 1942. Many Jews killed along the way were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Parczew. Historical accounts also record several mass shootings of Jews in Parczew in 1942.
By the summer of 1942, as mass deportations to death camps escalated, a Jewish partisan movement began to take shape in the region. Large Jewish family camps were established in the Parczew Forest, with several hundred Jews seeking to survive in dugouts after escaping from transports and nearby ghettos. One such camp, near the swampy area of Ochoża, was protected by a partisan unit formed by Soviet soldiers who had escaped from captivity in late 1941 and early 1942. According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, Jews hiding in the forest would often pass through nearby villages in search of food, only to fall victim to German ambushes.
On December 2, 1942, the Germans launched a large-scale anti-Jewish Aktion in the Parczew Forest. The operation was conducted by the 1st Motorized Police Battalion SS and platoons of the 25th Schutzpolizei. Residents of surrounding villages were interrogated to extract information about the location of Jews and partisans. The Germans conducted extensive searches in various parts of the forest, killing anyone they found in hiding. Villagers were requisitioned to bury the bodies of the victims. A Yahad witness recounted that the German forces surrounded the forest and used grenades to kill Jews hiding in bunkers. Numerous victims were buried in the forest by local villagers.
The operation ended on December 8, 1942, with the round-up of the village of Białka. This village had been home to many Poles who assisted Jews in hiding. As a result, the Germans killed 97 Polish residents of Białka along with a young Jewish woman who had been sheltering in one of the houses.
Despite the losses, new Jewish camps were established in the Parczew Forest by 1943. By the spring of 1943, these camps came under the protection of a Jewish partisan unit commanded by Chil Grynszpan. It is estimated that about 2,000 people passed through the Parczew forest camps during the war, with approximately 200 surviving the Holocaust.
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