Krychów 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 ...

neighbourhood ( pl, kolonia) in the administrative district of Gmina Hańsk, 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 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, C ...

, in eastern Poland. In 1975–98 the settlement belonged administratively to Chełm Voivodeship.

World War II

During

occupation of Poland Occupation commonly refers to: * Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, t ...

in World War II, Krychów was the location of a Nazi

forced labour 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 ...

established in 1940 for the

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...

, with several sub-camps. Krychów forced labour camp 1940 (Krowie Bagno)

The camp in Krychów was set up by the Germans in place of a small correctional facility for short-term offenders founded in 1935 in

interwar Poland The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

, which was a branch of the

Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...

prison. The prewar inmates were released by Polish administration already at the time of the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...

in the first days of September 1939 and the correctional centre stood empty. The Germans set up a Jewish camp there for around 1,500 men and women who were forced to build farms for the German "colonists".Aktion Reinhard Camps.
Sobibor Labour Camps.
' 15 June 2006. ARC Website. It was a main branch of several camps in Gmina Hańsk including Krychów, Hańsk-Dwór, Osowa, and Ujazdów, for the innocuous captives expelled from the neighbouring settlements. The camp in Krychów was managed by the Nazi German administration of the General Plan East preparing

latifundia A ''latifundium'' (Latin: ''latus'', "spacious" and ''fundus'', "farm, estate") is a very extensive parcel of privately owned land. The latifundia of Roman history were great landed estates specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, o ...

for the colonists brought in '' Heim ins Reich'' (Home into the Empire) from among the foreign ''

Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...

''. Due to proximity of the

Sobibór 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 a ...

many of the Jews who dug the

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

ditch A ditch is a small to moderate divot created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. Ditches ar ...

es in these camps were simply marched under the German guard for extermination by gassing at Sobibór, along with the imprisoned

Romani people The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sig ...

Geography

Krychów is located at the heart of '' Pojezierze Łęczyńsko-Włodawskie'' characterized by profusion of marshlands and meadows. There is less arable land here than in other areas of the central-Polish lowland. It is a legally protected area, a part of the Sobibór Landscape Park criss-crossed with hiking and biking trails for tourists.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansk-Kolonia Villages in Włodawa County Holocaust locations in Poland