Chelm | Lublin

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Execution of Jews in Chelm

3 Execution site(s)

Investigated by Yahad:
2011
Memorials:
Yes
Period of occupation:
1939-1944
Witnesses interviewed:
13

Witness interview

Witnesses interviewed: 13. (N°34, 41, 53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68). Including nine eyewitnesses. (N°41, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68), Helena D, 62P : “The graves were outside of the ghetto. The camp was close to the ghetto. The houses were empty. Our house was the last one that was occupied. It was surrounded by a long fence with barbed wire. The families who lived on Podgorna street had all been evicted. The Jews were sent to these houses. The Jews were all gathered in the ghetto. Then, they organized the transport of the Jews through Rampa Brzeska in order to take them to Wlodawa. Then, they ordered them to swim across the Bug. Some of them could swim, the others drowned.”

German archives

B162-4982: “Raschendorfer, a man of the Gestapo, the officer Rohlfing and Rudi Theimer caught us. We (61 people) were taken to a forest near Chelm. Near Chelm, in this forest called “Borek”, were two barracks. We lived in one barracks and the guards, men from the SS, in the other one.”

Polish Archives

DS 196/67 document 45-45rev “All the Jews were executed this way: they shot the Jews with a bullet in the back of the head as they knelt. The Jews came from Staw, Nowosiolki and Siedlicz. After the shooting, a policeman with a navy blue uniform ordered me to place them on a cart. I refused. He then gave me a shovel, in order that I get out Staw , behind the alder, to wait over the grave which was dug just before. After a while, when I arrived to the grave, some of the corpses had already been put into it.”

Nearby villages

  • Kolonia Boncza
  • Rudka
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