For a peaceful death...

"Once a sick five-year-old boy was brought to the hospital. His mother was by his side. He was already in agony. The mother, I noticed, was very anxious, but was embarrassed to say that the child had not been baptized. I looked at the child, he was dying, but he couldn't pass away. I took some water, baptized him, and the child peacefully passed away.”

Text source:

Account of Sister Stefania Fedorchuk. Dziecko w historii.Sytuacja dziecka w odrodzonym państwie polskim, ed. E. J. Kryńska, A. Suplicka, Ł. Kalisz, Białystok 2020, p. 113.

Photo source:

Special SS Laboratory – Sonderlaboratorium SS.

10,000 children were murdered

4454 children were Germanized

"The enraged German began to say something and suddenly there was a group of Germans around us and we were taken to the school. We were afraid and couldn't move; our legs trembled. They brought us into the school, where the room was full of Germans. We were terrible afraid, and we were not allowed to go anywhere. (...) We were herded behind the wires and treated like animals. In Zamość, behind the wires, children were taken from their parents and placed in separate barracks. Older women were assigned to (watch over) the children. Each woman was responsible for ten children. It became a hell; children, infants cried inhumanly. The elderly women were helpless. What could be expected of them when they themselves needed care?”.

Source of quote:

"Source of the quote: Testimony of Lucyna Targońska, née Niściór (Niścior), b. 1926, Zamojszczyzna - Sonderlaboratorium SS.Zbiór dokumentów polskich i niemieckich z okresu okupacji hitlerowskiej, ed. Cz. Madajczyk, Warsaw 1979, vol. II, p. 368.

Photo source:

General Governor Hans Frank visiting Zwierzyniec (National Archives in Zamość).

Excerpt from a list of displaced children from the Zamość region (National Archives in Zamość).

The beginning of a child's displacement. Resettlement camp in Zamość.

“And it could not die, I remember this child, as it was dying. Oh, it was terrible. (...) She lay in rags on the bunks, dying in the barracks. She was born in Skierbieszewo, and the parents were taken away with this little child and there they separated them, and left the child with someone. And there were many such children. And then she carried them out under the barracks somewhere and laid them down. They were taken out under the barracks and there was already someone older lying there. There they piled the dead and took them to the cemetery in Zamość".

Source of quote:

Account of Wacława Wójcik (Węcławik) about Martusia Szewerowa, a several-month-old girl displaced from Skierbieszów, who died at the turn of November/December 1942 in the camp in Zamość due to exhaustion and starvation. Byliśmy w transportach dzieci z Zamojszczyzny,introduction and elaboration by B. Kozaczyńska, Warsaw 2017, pp. 56-58.

Photo source:

Resettlement camp in Budzyń-Kraśnik (Institute of National Remembrance).

Resettlement camp in Zamość (Institute of National Remembrance).

Behind the barbed wires of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"Families and individuals classified in Group IV due to their racial value will be transferred to Birkenau as a workforce.”

The displaced from the transit camp in Zamość were transported in cattle wagons to Auschwitz-Birkenau in three transports: December 13 and 16, 1942, and February 5, 1943. Among them were children, the youngest being 8 years old. Of the 1,301 registered displaced persons, 82% died. The children died of exhaustion, in gas chambers, or were killed with injections of phenol into their hearts. Newborns born in the camp were also murdered in this way.

Source of quote:

Guidelines of SS-Obersturmbannführer H. Krumey regarding the classification of displaced persons in the Zamość camp on November 21, 1942, Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS..., vol. II, pp. 175, 177.

Photo source:

Transports of horror.

"During the transport, we were saved from freezing by our oldest sister. We were huddled together in a tight group. Marysia covered us with pieces of clothing on us, no longer needed by those frozen. At the station in Siedlce, we were a pile of stench. They pulled us out from under those rags. Fecal matter was flowing down the sides of the wagons, children in heavy winter clothes, infested with insects.”

In the cold winter of 1942/1943, the Germans transported children up to the age of 14 from the camp in Zamość to the Warsaw district in cattle wagons. They found shelter in Polish homes and orphanage preschools prepared by the Main Welfare Council. This was the fate of 5321 children and elderly people. For some, it was their last journey.

Source of quote:

Account of Janina Zielińska (née Malec), born in 1938. Nie było kiedy płakać. Losy rodzin polskich wysiedlonych z Zamojszczyzny, introduction and elaboration by B. Kozaczyńska, Siedlce 2014, pp. 57-58.

Photo source:

In the barracks of Zwierzyniec.

20,000 people were imprisoned, including 7,000 children.

Nearly 200 of the youngest prisoners perished.

"Displaced persons from the Bilgoraj poviat were driven to a camp near Zamość, and then, due to the overcrowding of the Zamość camp, to Zwierzyniec. The camp in Zwierzyniec is a square fenced with barbed wire, without any buildings. The conditions in the camps are terrible, the mortality rate (especially of children and the elderly) is immense."

Source of quote:

Information on repression operations. Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS..., vol. II, p. 128.

Photo source:

People displaced from the Biłgoraj poviat (National Archives in Zamość).

“Get up, Kasia, why aren’t you getting up, get up, Kasia – you're lying dead!" Repression of villages.

Sochy – 185 murdered (45 children)

Kitów – 164 murdered (28 children)

Bialowola – 51 Murdered (17 children)

“The Germans rushed into apartments, killed people and set buildings on fire. Houses were occupied one after another, terrified people fled, and then without exception and without mercy, men, women, and children were killed. Pregnant women, babies at their mothers' breasts, and children running with their parents were killed. Some of them knelt begging to be spared their lives, but this did not move the savage tormentors. People were thrown alive into the fire, the wounded were beaten. And there were some among the Germans who did this with sadistic delight and laughing devilishly."

Source of quote:

Account of Wanda Cebrykow and Kazimiera Świtajowa. Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS..., vol. II, p. 397, 429.

Photo source:

Victims of repression of the village of Białowola (National Archives in Zamość).

German repression units used Red Cross ambulances in displacement operations (Museum of the Biłgoraj region in Biłgoraj).

Mom...

"It was decided to gas the children from the repressed areas of Hrubieszów and the Zamość region and send the mothers to work in Germany. Previously, false rumors were spread that the children would be put under the care of the Red Cross, to nurseries and the Jordanowski gardens. When persuasion failed, they started forcibly taking them away (...). On the field, there was crying and sobbing. Mothers, mad with despair, fled with their children. The SS and capos caught them. I saw Hoffman in an SS uniform struggling with a peasant woman who held her baby tightly, refusing to give it away (...). I saw how at one point Hoffman snatched the child and threw the bloody, presumably already lifeless body into the car."

"If a child is taken from a mother, she desires with all her strength to die because the pain is unbearable, but at the same moment, she desires to live with all her strength to save it. Such a paradox crushes the soul. The baby is an anatomical part of the mother, so it's like an amputation without anesthesia."

Source of quotes:

Testimony of Kazimierz Wdzięczny, witness to the separation of children from their mothers in July 1943 at KL Lublin. AIPN, BU 2535/45, k. 4;

A. Janko, Mała zagłada,Krakow 2015, p. 174.

Photo source:

The seizure of Polish children in the Zamość region (public domain).

Children of the Zamość region in the camp on Przemysłowa Street in Łódź.

“The transport that took place in June 1944 is particularly etched in my memory.It was on 6th June 1944 when a transport of 10 trucks arrived in the camp with children from the Zamość region. I saw one of the guards kill a little boy. He pulled his victim, who was about 10 years old, out of the wagon by his hair and banged his head against the edge of the sidewalk (…). I know that this transport stayed in the camp for only a few hours. The next day there was no trace of these people”.

Source of quote:

Minutes of the hearing of witness Czesława Werner. AIPN, GK 503/106, vol. 14, p. 23-23v.

Photo source:

Transport of children to the camp on Przemysłowa Street (Institute of National Remembrance).

The first assembly of children after their arrival at the camp on Przemysłowa Street (Institute of National Remembrance).

Difficult returns – unaccounted for crimes.

“For all these events – the children of the Zamość region accuse the Nazi Germans. I would add a few more words to this, namely: the children of the Zamość region accuse and warn today all those who want war, who pursue it."

Of the several thousand youngest displaced destined for Germanization, most did not return to their homeland. The adult "Children of the Zamość region," filled with fear, the trauma of war experiences, often did not find the strength to come to terms with the past. The main organizers of Aktion Zamość, such as Heinrich Himmler, Fridrich Wilhelm Krüger, and Odilo Globocnik, committed suicide after being captured by the Allies. Herman Krumey was not tried until the 1960s. Many of the direct perpetrators of the crimes escaped punishment.

Source of quote:

Account of Maria Wilgia, victim of displacement. Zamojszczyzna – Sonderlaboratorium SS..., vol. II, p. 428.

Photo source:

Children released from KL Lublin at St. John's Hospital (Institute of National Remembrance).