Listing of Labor Camps in the Lublin District During the Holocaust

Below is a listing of forced labor camps (excluding the death camps Sobibor, Majdanek, and Belzec) in the Lublin district, eastern Poland, where Jews were murdered during the Shoah. The listing is not complete because testimony regarding these camps is limited and there has not been extensive research regarding these locations available in English.

There were 491 labor camps established in General Government, of which 154 were situated in Lublin district. By December 1942, still 20,000 Jews from the Lublin district were living in the district. In addition to Jews from eastern Poland, large groups of Jews from outside of Poland were transported into the Lublin district, and to many of these labor camps, beginning in 1940. Few survived.

Each area in Lublin district had its own district chief (later called Gouverneur), in charge of their jurisdiction. Frank's administration had 12 governmental departments, each headed by a civil servant. Large cities were ruled by a mayor (Stadthauptmann). District chief of Lublin Ernst Zoerner eventually grew the German administration in Lublin district to more than 700 Nazis. On November 9, 1939, Heinrich Himmler appointed Odilo Globocnik the S.S. and Police Leader in the Lublin district of the General Government territory. At a two-hour meeting with Himmler on October 13, 1941, Globocnik received verbal approval to start construction work on the Belzec extermination camp, the first of its kind. Globocnik continued in his position, the chief exterminator of the Jews, until August 1943, when he was succeeded by Jakob Sporrenberg. In November, 1943, Sporrenberg and F. Wilhelm Krueger organized the Operation "Harvest Festival" (Aktion Erntefest), which effectively removed almost all Jews from the Lublin district via mass extermination. This action was ordered as revenge for the Jewish revolts and escapes from Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps. The Aktion Erntefest murders of 44,000 Jews in November of 1943 took place at Majdanek, Dorohucza, Naleczow, Poniatowa and Trawniki camps.

The ten counties of the district were: Lublin (Land), Pulawy, Radzyn, Biala Podlaska, Chelm, Hrubieszow, Zamosc, Bilgoraj, Janow Lubelski, and Krasnystaw. The below listing focuses on areas south of Lublin, and therefore Radzyn and Biala Podlaska are excluded from the listing. This is due to the researchers’ own time limitations.