The Massacre at Wożuczyn — Rachanie
In late 1942, a massacre involving approximately 70 Jewish forced laborers from the Wożuczyn sugar factory (Municipality of Rachanie, District of Zamość near Tomaszow Lubelski) and about 25 Jews from the surrounding villages. The sugar factory is pictured above, at right.
In late 1942—evidence suggests the date may have been December 28, 1942—these individuals were murdered on the factory grounds by six German perpetrators, who shot them in the back of the head with pistols. Subsequently, the victims were robbed, loaded onto sleds, and buried in a nearby field along the roadside.
The witness statements identify the perpetrators as “gendarmes from the Rachanie police station” and “S.S. men.”
Unidentified S.S. operatives (with family members) at Wozuczyn station, Tomaszow Lubelski district, during the Holocaust.
Photo sources: A photo album by Feliks Łukowski—published in 2005 by the Museum in Zamość—titled The World of Cottages, Barns, and Fences: The Village Through the Lens of Feliks Łukowski of Siemnice, Tomaszów Lubelski County. Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s.
The album contains a selection of 382 photographs taken between 1942 and 1950. The majority of the images documenting life under German occupation are grouped within the subsection titled "War." The ‘war’ section comprises 38 photographs, eleven of which depict Soviet soldiers posing for the camera.
Volksdeutsche Nazi operative in Siemnice, near Woluczyn and Tomaszow Lubelski. His surname was Lenz.
Three S.S. operatives at Rachanie, Poland.
RELATED LINKS:
- Mariana Holzer Testimony
- “The Peasant Memory of War Through the Photographs of Feliks Łukowski” by Zusanna Bogumil.
The above photo, from Lukowski, includes a Jewish woman in the Rachanie ghetto. The man is also in the Ghetto but is wearing a Judenrat armband.