Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto
| Międzyrzec Ghetto | |
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Commemorative plaque at the Main Square in the Old Town district of Międzyrzec, marking the place where Jews were first assembled for deportation to Treblinka and Majdanek death camps in 1942   Location of Międzyrzec Ghetto in World War II, | |
| Location | Międzyrzec Podlaski, German-occupied Poland |
| Incident type | Imprisonment, mass shooting, forced labor, starvation, deportations to death camps |
| Perpetrators | Nazi SS, Orpo police battalions |
| Victims | 20,000 Jews |
The Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto was one of the World War II ghettos established by Nazi Germany for the local Jewish population of Międzyrzec Podlaski in the semi-colonial General Government territory of occupied Poland. The ghetto was liquidated in stages between 1942 and 1943 as part of the Final Solution, with all Jews either killed on the spot in mass shooting actions or deported to Treblinka and Majdanek death camps.
Ghetto history
At the end of September 1939, following the Soviet invasion of Poland, the Red Army conquered the city of Międzyrzec Podlaski. At the beginning of October, the Soviet Union surrendered the city to Germany as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Following the exchange, approximately 2,000 of the city’s Jews left for the Soviet-occupied zone. The Germans set up a transfer ghetto in the city, holding up to 20,000 Jewish prisoners at its peak. On August 25–26, 1942 some 11,000–12,000 Jews were rounded up by German Ordnungspolizei amid gunfire and screams and loaded onto Holocaust trains to Treblinka extermination camp.[1]
The next mass extermination action took place around October and November 1942.[1] "Strip-search" of young Jewish women was introduced by Oberleutnant Hartwig Gnade before executions dubbed "mopping up" actions. His first sergeant later said: "I must say that First Lieutenant Gnade gave me the impression that the entire business afforded him a great deal of pleasure."[2] The wave of mass killings lasting non-stop for several days were conducted by the Trawniki battalion of about 350 to 400 men, while the Germans from the parallel Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the Ordnungspolizei from Hamburg dealt with unruly crowds of thousands of ghetto inhabitants.[1]
On the seventeenth of July 1943, the ghetto was liquidated, with all remaining Jews deported to Treblinka and Majdanek death camps; at which time the last 160–200 residents were shot, and the city was officially declared free of Jews. Fewer than 1% of the Jewish population of the city survived the German occupation.
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Browning, Christopher R. (1998) [1992]. "Arrival in Poland" (PDF FILE, DIRECT DOWNLOAD 7.91 MB COMPLETE). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Penguin Books. pp. 80–93. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
Also: PDF cache archived by WebCite.
- ↑ Browning 1998, pp. 106–108.
References
- Christopher R. Browning (1998). Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (AMAZON.CO, KINDLE BOOK: LOOK INSIDE). Harper Perennial; reprint edition April 24, 1998. ISBN 0060995068.
- Ghetto's history and liquidation, by Mezritch.org
Coordinates: 51°59′N 22°47′E / 51.983°N 22.783°E
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