Piaski (bei Lublin)

Piaski (also Piaski Luterskie) is a small town about 20 kilometres southeast of Lublin. Under German occupation a ghetto was set up there; after several thousand Polish Jews, two transports of Jews deported from Stettin (Szczecin) arrived in February 1940. The prisoners suffered constant hunger and catastrophic sanitary conditions.

In spring 1942, at the start of "Aktion Reinhardt", the SS used Piaski as one of the transit ghettos of the Lublin District for Jews deported from the German Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; deportees were held there until they were sent on to the killing centres. To make room for the new arrivals, about 3,000 inmates were taken to the Belzec killing centre at the end of March 1942. After a further selection in early April 1942, several hundred Polish, German and Austrian Jews were taken to Trawniki and locked into a barn overnight; between 200 and 500 of them suffocated before the transport left for Belzec. Further deportations followed at the end of June and on 8 November 1942; according to eyewitnesses, the November operation mainly affected Czech and German Jews.

When the ghetto was dissolved in February 1943, several hundred people were shot in the Jewish cemetery and the remaining inmates were deported to the Sobibor killing centre. The Jewish Museum in Prague estimates that more than 11,000 Jews were brought to Piaski, about half of them from abroad; of those deported there from Theresienstadt, only six survived.

From Berlin

The 11th Berlin "Osttransport" left on 28 March 1942, the first deportation from Berlin after a pause of about three months. The deportees had been held in the assembly camp in the Levetzowstraße synagogue. Of 985 names on the Gestapo list, 12 were struck off, so that 973 people were deported according to statistik-des-holocaust.de; Yad Vashem gives up to 985. By the end of March 1942, about 2,000 Jews from the Reich had reached Piaski – this transport and one from Mainz/Darmstadt. The train arrived at Trawniki station on 30 March, and the deportees had to walk about 12 kilometres to the Piaski ghetto. During a stop in Lublin, able-bodied men aged 15 to 50 were taken off the train for forced labour building the Majdanek camp – at least 23 according to the camp's death register, probably more than 100.

Jews from the Reich held in Piaski were later deported to the Belzec and Sobibor killing centres (see above). The memorial book for the murdered Jews of Berlin lists 972 names from this transport; historian Rita Meyhöfer counts three survivors.

1 transport from Berlin brought 973 people here; at least 0 of them are known to have survived.