Rudka | Lublin

/ Zdzislaw U., born in 1928, was ordered by gendarmes to dig a pit in a wood and to bury a young Jewish mother and her child, who brought to Rudka for execution. ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum Zdzislaw U., born in 1928, regularly saw a group of one hundred Jews from the Chełm ghetto, led by Jewish policemen, coming to Rudka to work in the stone quarries. ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum The Yahad team during an interview. ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum Zdzislaw U., born in 1928, showing the team the execution site next to the main road in Rudka, where a Jewish man was shot by a German gendarme in summer 1942 as a column of Jews passed through the town. ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum Zdzislaw U., born in 1928: "Here is the place where I buried the young Jewish man shot in the head by a gendarme". ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum Zdzislaw U., born in 1928, showing the place where he dug a grave and buried a Jewish mother and her little daughter, both taken here in winter 1943 by Germans to be shot. ©Olga Szymerowska/Yahad - In Unum

Execution of Jews in Rudka

2 Killing site(s)

Investigated by Yahad:
2011
Kind of place before:
Woods alongside road
Memorials:
No
Period of occupation:
1939-1944
Number of victims:
3
Witnesses interviewed:
1

Witness interview

Zdzislaw U., born in 1928: "I saw a column of Jews arriving from Izbica. I was tasked with burying a Jew near the road. There were hundreds of trolleys filled with Jews, while younger Jewish men walked behind them. A young man was executed by a gendarme with a bullet to the head […]. I buried him with a neighbor by the roadside. From his identity papers, I saw that he was 42 years old.” [Testimony N°YIU67P, interviewed in Rudka, on July 17, 2011]

Historical note

Rudka is a village in the administrative district of Chełm, located in the Lublin Voivodeship in eastern Poland, approximately 5 km (3.1 miles) southeast of Chełm. According to a local witness interviewed by Yahad, there were no Jewish residents in Rudka before the war. However, a significant Jewish community flourished in the nearby town of Chełm.

Holocaust by bullets in figures

After the outbreak of the Second World War, due to Rudka’s proximity to the Chełm ghetto, Jews were regularly taken to the quarries in the Rudka forest to extract stones for the construction of a local road. According to a witness interviewed by Yahad, the Jews were guarded by Jewish policemen and forced to work under very harsh conditions.

There were also isolated shootings of Jews in Rudka. The first execution, as reported by Yahad’s witness, occurred in the summer of 1942, when a Jewish man from a column of Jews passing through Rudka on their way to the Sobibor death camp was shot by a German soldier.

A second execution, described by the witness, took place in the winter of 1943. The witness was ordered by the Germans to bury the bodies of a Jewish woman and her infant daughter, who had been executed in the nearby woods.

For more information about the killing of Jews from Chełm, please follow the corresponding profile.

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