The second round-up took place in July 1940. The Jewish slaves were
sent to Tyszowce, in the county of Hrubieszów.¹⁰⁰ The Jewish forced labourers
were employed in land improvement works, many of them on construction
of the narrow-gauge railway. Typically, it was rumoured in the city that the
Warsaw kehillah had bribed the Lublin kehillah to send workers from Lublin
in place of workers from Warsaw. It is difficult to establish whether those
rumours were well founded. The Lublin kehillah was to take care of the Jews
sent to forced labour and supply them with food. In that labour camp, there
were several hundred Jews from Lublin [5] living in the worst conditions.
The workers there were broken both physically and psychologically by the
dreadful housing conditions, hunger, and epidemics. Those who still received
money from home somehow managed to survive; the others died of disease
and starvation.
There remains to mention the tragic case of young Yisroel Bornsztajn,
a 17-year-old schoolboy who contracted czerwonka.¹⁰¹ The German murderers
could think of no way to cure the sick boy and combat the wretched disease
which had started to spread in the camp, other than to shoot him.
The third round-up took place in August of the same year. Gendarmes
and kehillah officials took part in the night-time raid. Those seized for forced
labour (about 1,500 people) were sent to Szczonów [?].¹⁰²
For the following reasons, it seems likely that the August round-up was
simply self-motivated.
The kehillah had quite openly begun to engage in a legal slave trade. It was
run by Kestenberg, already mentioned, and his accomplices, a large section
of the kehillah officials. A labour exchange was set up. Freeing oneself from
assignation to a labour camp cost 800 zlotys and more. In addition, a new
practice was introduced: the possibility of supplying purchased individuals.
100 Camp in Tyszowce (Zamość County, author’s error), labour camp of the water management (Wasserwirtschaft), established in 1940. Its inmates, approximately 500 Jews, carried out drainage works on arable land on the Huczwa River. See J. Marszałek, Obozy pracy, p. 42.
101 (Polish) dysentery.
102 On the night of 13–14 August 1940, 1,362 Jewish men were rounded up in Lublin and deported to the labour camp in Bełżec. It seems that the author is describing this event. See T. Radzik, Lubelska dzielnica zamknięta, p. 123. No locality by the name of Szczonów has been identified, it was probably Cieszanów.
