Remember Jewish Komarów (Osada)

Pronunciation: Komm-are-ov

JEWISH HISTORY

It is unclear when the Jewish community of Komarow was established, but by 1750 Jews in town had established a synagogue, prayer house and cemetery. In 1766, 247 Jews lived there. In 1856, the town had a total of 1,625 residents, including 943 (58%) Jews. In 1897 there were 2,618 people living in the town and Jews constituted 59% (1,568) of the total population. In 1921, 60% of the 1,752 residents were Jews. Supporters of a tzaddik from Kock had established their shtibl in Komarow around 1850. Before the war, there were about 1,752 Jewish inhabitants out of 2,895 total. The town rabbi was Szyja Alterman. Ritual slaughterers in town were: S. M. Bobek, F. Becher, and M. Elster.

NEARBY JEWISH COMMUNITIES

Nearby Jewish communities included the following:

- Labunie: Several dozen of the Jews from Slovakia and Czechoslovakia who were deported to Zamosc or Izbica ghettos in 1941 and 1942 were eventually sent to the Labunie Labor Camp. In 1943, the Labunie Labor Camp was liquidated, when all of the Jews were executed.

- Rachanie: It is unclear how long the Jewish community of Rachanie existed. By the 1880s, about 18 Jewish families lived in the area, growing to a small community in the interwar period, largely situated near the road to Jozefowka. The Jewish community operated two water mills, two oil mills, two beer stores, grocery stores, liquor/tobacco stores and a tavern. The community had a private beit ha-midrash and a small cemetery but relied on nearby towns for a formal synagogue. In October 1939, some Jews fled toward Soviet-occupied territory. A labor camp was later established in the area. Many residents and Jewish residents from surrounding areas were killed by German forces, with several murders occurring as late as 1943. A cemetery was located on a hill in the eastern part of the village, which was devastated after World War II, with tombstone fragments used for paving roads.

DURING THE HOLOCAUST

Komarow was occupied by the German forces on September 13, 1939. Russian forces marched into the town on the 28th of September 1939, but they withdrew after 12 days, giving way to the German occupiers. Part of the Jewish community left Komarow during the retreat of the Russians. The Nazis began to victimize the Jewish community shortly after they arrived and set appointed a head of local administration and created the Polish auxiliary police. In late 1939, a Jewish Council was established, and a Jewish police force was formed. Daniel Szwarc and Leibel Fruchtkaufer were the chairman and vice-chairman of the Judenrat. Abram Elbaum was also chair of the Judenrat at one point and also ran a self-help organization. In July 1941, Kelman Fogiel assumed the JSS (Jewish Self-Help) chairmanship. During the war, an illegal yeshiva operated in the town with around 40 students, operated by Rabbi Alterman.

In command of the Komarow ghetto was the S.S. man, sadist Ernst Schultz. Other S.S. men in Komarow included Helmuth Weihenmaier, Heinrich Schoenemann (Schonemann) and Ferdinand Schwabe. After the Nazis ordered all Jews to wear an armband with the star of David, around 30 Jewish disobedients were caught by Nazi soldiers and taken to the local Jewish cemetery, where they were executed. Slave labor was one of the main tasks of the Jews in the Komarow ghetto. There was an extensive network of labor camps in the area:

• From the spring until late October 1940, 350 men from Komarow were interned at labor camps such as Narol (south of Tomaszow Lubelskie) as well as a water drainage camp at Bortatycze.
• Feldman, an ethnic German collaborator with the Germans, employed Jewish craftsmen at the tannery in Komarow.
• Other Jewish laborers worked on the Komarow to Zamosc road construction project, which was completed before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
• In April of 1941 a group of 400 Jews from Komarow ghetto were sent to the Zamosc ghetto. Separate from this, some 1,000 Jews traveled daily to work sites near and in Zamosc; for example, some worked at a sawmill, while others were in slave labor at two Czech construction firms. The Czech firms had received contracts by the Bauleitung der Luftwaffe and were constructing bases at Labunie and Mokre.
• Jews in the Komarow ghetto were also sent to the Tyszowce Labor Camp between spring 1941 and fall of 1942.
• There was also a nearby labor camp in Rachanie that Komarow ghetto residents were sent to between April of 1942 and August of 1943.
• Many Jews from Komarow and Zamosc subsequently worked at the Luftwaffe airfield bases either interned there, or in Zamosc itself.
• In the spring of 1941, children residing in Komarow went to work for Polish and Ukrainian villagers as domestic servants or farm laborers during the week. They returned home on Saturdays, usually bearing food their employers provided to supplement the wages they paid to the Arbeitsamt Labor Office.
• Other locations where Jews were sent included Laszczow Labor Camp and the airport at Labunie.
• Finally, Jews in Komarow were sent to the Mikulin Labor Camp throughout 1940 as well as between May and November of 1942.

A ghetto was created in Komarow in the summer of 1941, although there was no wall surrounding it initially. Jewish police, under Nazi rule, patrolled it. In September 1941 there were 3,000 Jews in the ghetto. Included in this group were: 730 Jews from Prague and Vienna who had arrived in May 1941; 200 Jews from Wloclawek, Kolo and Czestochowa who had arrived in 1940; an unknown number of Jews from Lodz and Sierpc; 400 Jews from Zamosc; and an unknown number of Jews from Krasnobrod, Laczczow, and Tyszowce.

In the spring of 1941, Ernst Schulz shot and killed, 19-year-old Mordechai Motel Tempkin. In November 1941, Hans Frank, the Governor, imposed the death penalty on the Jews in the Generalgouvernement found without permission outside of their places of registration. Typhus epidemics broke out in the ghetto in May of 1941, again in September of 1941, and again in January of 1942.

Gendarmes, led by Nazi S.S. man Ernst Schulz, rounded up members of the Judenrat and Jews without work permits and executed them in June 1942. On July 5, 1942, Kielman Fogiel informed the JSS officials that the Komarow ghetto had 1,723 inmates, including 650 Jews from Czechoslovakia. The Jewish ghetto residents also sustained beatings, especially from Schulz, and on October 5, 1942, he ordered approximately 50 young men and women to the square for municipal cleaning duties. They were surrounded by the S.S. and killed. Additionally, in the autumn of 1942, in the village of Zwiartów, Krynica commune, Jan Chmiel participated in the murder of five Jews hiding in the forest.

Several deportations took place from Komarow, including two in May of 1942 that included over 2,000 Jews. One of these transports went to Belzec Death Camp and the other went to Sobibor Death Camp. In November, 1942, 1,000 additional Jews were sent to Belzec. The Nazis also murdered approximately 2,500 Jews situated in Komarow ghetto between 1st October and 31st of October 1942. Bodies of the dead Jews were buried in a field in several mass graves. The ghetto was liquidated at the end of November, 1942.

WHAT REMAINS

Fewer than 15 Jews from the town, out of a total of 1,752, survived the war.

The Jewish cemetery in Komarów-Osada is situated on the southern side of Piłsudskiego Street, 550 meters west of the Market Square. During the Holocaust, the Nazis carried out executions within the cemetery grounds. In the 1990s, Moritz Trost from Frankfurt am Main helped clear the cemetery and enclose it with a fence. Several grave markers remain. The exact date of the cemetery's establishment is unknown, though it likely originated in the second half of the 18th century.

Zachor - We Remember. Please review the site content below.

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[Jewish Partisans in Poland's Lublin District]
[Komarow — Jewish cemetery]
[Komarow-Osada: Report from Yahad in Unum]
[Testimony of survivor Adam Shtibel]
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