much that “gentleman’s promise” was worth. On Tuesday, 22 May this year,
the first day of the Shavuot holiday (Pentecost), the Jewish population of the
town was massacred. Approximately 200 children and the elderly (it remains
impossible to provide the exact number of victims in Tyszowce and other
towns due to the pace of the Aktion, its circumstances and the explicit ban on
recording the names of the victims in the departments of cemeteries’ registers
of deaths) were killed in a particularly barbarous way. Another 600 people
were deported in an “unknown direction”, possibly to Sobibór (a killing centre
for Jews). Approx. 800 Jews fell victim to the Ausrottung. The only survivors
were those who managed to hide. 120 men employed on German details
were given the right to live. The remaining Jews dwell “illegally” in horrible
conditions as far as housing, hygiene and food provision are concerned. Today
Schultz increased the number of Jews permitted to stay, and therefore live,
to 300 souls. The Jews are living from day to day, uncertain if they are going to
survive and long deprived of their property.⁶⁶³
Trawniki⁶⁶⁴
On the Lublin–Chełm route there is the small railway station of Trawniki and
a locality by the same name. A camp for Soviet citizens and POWs was established
in Trawniki with the outbreak of the German–Soviet War. The Germans
quickly “liquidated” that camp, killing most of its prisoners and using that
occasion to liquidate the entire local Jewish population (a few hundred souls).
A larger gas chamber and a primitive crematorium have been operating in
the camp for a while. Trains with Jewish deportees, mostly from Slovakia
and the Czech Republic [in 1942 Bohemia and Moravia had been annexed to
the Third Reich, leaving Slovakia as a dependent state], have been arriving in
Trawniki almost every day since the inauguration of that chamber and crematorium,
bringing approximately 1,500 people per day. After their arrival the
deportees are deprived of everything they have, are stripped naked and then
hurried to the said chamber. When the chamber is packed full it is hermetically
sealed and poisonous gas is introduced into it with the use of suitable
appliances. After 15–30 minutes everybody in the chamber is dead. When the
remains of the gas have been removed from the chamber the suffocated Jews
663 See Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, pp. 720–722.
664 Trawniki (Lublin County).
