The Międzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto was one of the

Nazi ghetto Beginning with the invasion of Poland during World War II, the Nazi regime set up ghettos across German-occupied Eastern Europe in order to segregate and confine Jews, and sometimes Romani people, into small sections of towns and cities furtheri ...

s established for the confinement and persecution of the Jewish population of

Międzyrzec Podlaski Międzyrzec Podlaski () is a town in Biała Podlaska County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland, with a population of 17,102 inhabitants . The total area of the town is . Międzyrzec is located in the historic region of Podlachia, near the Krzna river, n ...

in the

General Government The General Government (, ; ; ), formally the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (), was a German zone of occupation established after the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, Slovak Republic (1939–1945), Slovakia and the Soviet ...

territory of

occupied Poland ' (Norwegian language, Norwegian: ') is a Norwegian political thriller TV series that premiered on TV 2 (Norway), TV2 on 5 October 2015. Based on an original idea by Jo Nesbø, the series is co-created with Karianne Lund and Erik Skjoldbjærg. ...

. The ghetto was liquidated in stages between 1942 and 1943 as part of the "

Final Solution The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a plan orchestrated by Nazi Germany during World War II for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official ...

", with all Jews either killed on the spot in mass shooting actions or deported to

Treblinka Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the Treblinka, ...

and Majdanek death camps.

Ghetto history

At the end of September 1939, during the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

, the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

occupied the city of

. At the beginning of October, the Soviet Union handed over the city to Germany as part of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty amended to the secret Hitler-Stalin Pact against Poland in 1939. Following the exchange, approximately 2,000 of the city's Jews left for the

territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union Seventeen days after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, the Soviet Union entered the eastern regions of Poland (known as the ) and annexed territories totalling with a population of 13,299 ...

. The Germans set up a transfer ghetto in the historic neighbourhood of Szmulowizna. It held 20,000 Jewish prisoners at its peak. On August 25–26, 1942 some 11,000–12,000 Jews were rounded up by German

Order Police battalions Order Police battalions were battalion-sized militarised units of Nazi Germany's ''Ordnungspolizei'' which existed during World War II from 1939 to 1945. They were subordinated to the ''Schutzstaffel'' and deployed in areas of German-occupied E ...

amid gunfire and screams and deported to the

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was the second-deadliest extermination camp to be built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Mas ...

. The next mass extermination action took place around October and November 1942. "Strip-search" of young Jewish women was introduced by ''

Oberleutnant (English: First Lieutenant) is a senior lieutenant Officer (armed forces), officer rank in the German (language), German-speaking armed forces of Germany (Bundeswehr), the Austrian Armed Forces, and the Swiss Armed Forces. In Austria, ''Oberle ...

'' Hartwig Gnade before executions dubbed "mopping up" actions. His first sergeant later said: "I must say that First Lieutenant Gnade gave me the impression that the entire business afforded him a great deal of pleasure."Browning 1998, pp. 106–108. The wave of mass killings lasting non-stop for several days, conducted by the Trawniki battalion of about 350 to 400 men, while the Germans from the parallel Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the ''

Ordnungspolizei The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (''Orpo'', , meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly of power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of t ...

'' from Hamburg dealt with the thousands of ghetto inhabitants. On the seventeenth of July 1943, the ghetto was liquidated, with all remaining Jews deported to

and Majdanek extermination camps; at which time the last 160–200 residents were shot, and the city was officially declared free of Jews. Fewer than 1% of the Jewish population of the city survived the German occupation.

Escape and rescue

Jewish townsman Sender Dyszel, who managed to escape shootings in Międzyrzec, was rescued by Polish Righteous Franciszka Abramowicz (1899–1990). She brought him food into the forest until he could return to her later. Dyszel emigrated to Argentina after 1947.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Miedzyrzec Podlaski Ghetto Ghettos in Lublin District Jewish Polish history Reserve Police Battalion 101

Ghetto history

Escape and rescue

See also

References

Further reading

External links