Osowa is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the administrative district of

Gmina Hańsk __NOTOC__ Gmina Hańsk is a rural gmina (administrative district) in Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Hańsk, which lies approximately south-west of Włodawa and east of the regional capital Lu ...

, within

Włodawa County __NOTOC__ Włodawa County ( pl, powiat włodawski) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine and Belarus. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a resu ...

, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately east of

Hańsk Hańsk is a village in Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Hańsk. It lies approximately south-west of Włodawa and east of the regional capital Lublin ...

, south of

Włodawa Włodawa (; yi, וולאָדאַווע, Vlodave; ua, Володава, Volodava) is a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It is the seat of Włodawa County, situated in the Lublin Voivodeship ...

, and east of the regional capital

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

WWII labor camp Osowa

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the Nazis established a

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

for Polish Jewish citizens, as well as citizens of other states, mostly

Czech Jewish The history of the Jews in the Czech lands, which include the modern Czech Republic as well as Bohemia, Czech Silesia and Moravia, goes back many centuries. There is evidence that Jews have lived in Moravia and Bohemia since as early as the 10 ...

prisoners brought here from the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The camp was founded in

1941 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January–August – 10,072 men, women and children with mental and physical disabilities are asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in a gas chamber, at Hadamar Eu ...

and had an average of about 1,000 prisoners at a time. In total, about 4,000 people passed through the camp. The prisoners worked mostly in melioration of the surrounding meadows. Around 170 people died as a result of harsh working conditions, and another about 70 were executed by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. The camp was disbanded in

1943 Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured. * January 4 – ...

and its prisoners taken to the nearby

Sobibor extermination camp Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As ...

, where they were murdered.''Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939-1945. Informator encyclopedyczny'', ed. C. Pilichowski et al., Warsaw 1979, p. 353.

References

Villages in Włodawa County {{Włodawa-geo-stub