Sawin (; uk, Савин) is a
settlement
Settlement may refer to:
*Human settlement, a community where people live
*Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building
*Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction
*Settlement (fina ...
in
Chełm County,
Lublin Voivodeship
The Lublin Voivodeship, also known as the Lublin Province (Polish: ''województwo lubelskie'' ), is a voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in southeastern part of the country. It was created on January 1, 1999, out of the former Lublin, CheŠ...
, in eastern Poland.
It is the seat of the
gmina
The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' , from German ''Gemeinde'' meaning ''commune'') is the principal unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,477 gminas throughout the country, encompassing over 4 ...
(administrative district) called
Gmina Sawin. It lies approximately north of
Chełm 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 ...
.
The settlement has a population of 2,181.
Jewish Community
The first Jewish synagogue was built in Sawin on Brzeskiej Street in the early 1880s. A second
synagogue
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
was built in 1925 when the
611 Jews living in the village represented 48% of total population. There were 882 Jews living in the village at the start of World War II. They included 157 traders and salesmen, 75 craftsmen, and 250 laborers.
The Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of the village, on a street called Chuteckiej, was vandalized in 1943. In 1999, Mordechai Holcblat, a Sawin native living in Israel, rectified a wooden fence. In 2001, Philip Goldstejn, a Sawin native from Canada, and Mr. Holcblat from Israel created a Holocaust memorial on stone brought from Israel. They had the cemetery cleaned and the remaining gravestones were reset.
The Holocaust
The Nazis destroyed both synagogues and created a slave labor camp in November 1940 for local Jews and others from Kraków, Czechoslovakia, France, Austria, and Yugoslavia. They built drainage ditches and later were sent to extermination camps. Sawin's labor camp was closed on December 9, 1943, marching prisoners to
Sobibor
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 an ...
.
Sawin was the site of a Jewish forced labor camp established by the Germans for the purpose of improving water for the area. This camp had between 700 and 800 Jewish workers.
References
Villages in Chełm County
Ruthenian Voivodeship
Kholm Governorate
Lublin Voivodeship (1919–1939)
Holocaust locations in Poland
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