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Stefania S., born in 1930: "One day, the Jews arrived by train and were kept for a few days in the square next to the agricultural school. Then, one Sunday morning, we heard the sound of a peeling machine. My father was surprised because the Germans didn’t usually work on Sundays. My mother forbade us from going outside, so I watched through the small window of our house as several groups of Jews passed by. After one group had gone, we heard a lot of shooting—so much shooting. Later that day, when we went to look near the railway, we saw that the pit had been covered with earth, forming a long barrow, about 10 meters in length.” [Testimony N°YIU847P, interviewed in Klementowice, on June 27, 2018]
Klementowice is a village in the Kurów district, Puławy county, in eastern Poland. It is situated approximately 7 km (4 miles) southwest of Kurów, 15 km (9 miles) southeast of Puławy, and 32 km (20 miles) west of the regional capital, Lublin. According to local witnesses interviewed by Yahad, there were no Jewish residents in Klementowice before the war.
German units entered Klementowice in September 1939. Although there was no permanent German gendarmerie post in the village, a German division was stationed at the agricultural school to oversee local railway construction, which was carried out by forced laborers from the Junaki labor camp, established in Klementowice.
In June 1942, the Germans brought approximately 400 Jewish men from the Warsaw Ghetto to Klementowice by train to work on the railway construction. According to witnesses interviewed by Yahad, the men were kept in the courtyard of the agricultural school under extremely harsh conditions, sleeping and eating in the open air for several days. As most of the men were starving and unable to work, the Germans selected 50 Jews deemed fit for labor. The remaining 350 were executed.
Initially, a group of Jewish men was taken by the Germans in a truck to the nearby Stary Las forest and ordered to dig a pit. Exhausted and too weak to complete the task, two of the men were killed on the spot, and their bodies were left in the forest. The rest of the group was returned to the schoolyard.
The following night, a pit was dug in a field near the railway using the excavators employed for track construction. On a Sunday morning in June 1942, when there were no witnesses working in the surrounding fields, the Jewish men were taken to the pit, shot, and buried with the excavator.
To commemorate the Jewish victims murdered in Klementowice, a memorial was erected at the execution site in 2015.
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