Thousands of Jews lived in the towns of Dęblin and in central Poland before World War II; Irena was the site of the Polish Air Force Academy from 1927. In September 1939, the town was captured during the German invasion of Poland. The persecution of Jews began with drafts into forced labor and the establishment of a Judenrat ("Jewish Council"). A ghetto was established in Irena in November 1940. It initially consisted of six streets and was an open ghetto (the Jews were not allowed to leave without permission, but non-Jews could enter). Many ghetto inhabitants worked on labor projects for Dęblin Fortress (a German Army base), the railway, and the Luftwaffe. Beginning in May 1941, Jews were sent to labor camps around Dęblin from the Opole and Warsaw ghettos. Conditions in the ghetto worsened in late 1941 due to increased German restrictions on ghetto inhabitants and epidemics of typhus and dysentery.
The first deportation was on 6 May 1942 and took around 2,500 Jews to Sobibór extermination camp. A week later, two thousand Jews arrived from Slovakia and hundreds more from nearby ghettos that had been liquidated. In October that same year, the Irena ghetto was liquidated; about 2,500 Jews were deported to Treblinka extermination camp while some 1,400 Jews were retained as inmates of forced-labor camps in the town. Unusually, the labor camp operated by the Luftwaffe—employing, at its peak, about a thousand Jews—was allowed to exist until 22 July 1944, less than a week before the area was captured by the Red Army. One of the last Jewish labor camps in the Lublin District, it enabled hundreds of Jews to survive the Holocaust. Some survivors who returned home were met with hostility, and several were murdered; all left by 1947.
Background
Dęblin and (, ) are located northwest of Lublin in Poland, at the confluence of the Vistula and Wieprz rivers and at an important junction on the Lublin–Warsaw rail line. Local Jews supported the January Uprising in 1863. By the end of the nineteenth century, the area was a center of Hasidic Judaism; most Jews followed the Modzitz dynasty, named after the town of Irena, and there were also Gur Hasidim. Modzitz Rebbe Yisrael Taub settled in the town in 1889. Other Jews were Bundists or Zionists. Many Jews made their living as peddlers, shopkeepers, or artisans (especially in leatherwork and metalwork) and later participated in the development of the town as a summer resort. In 1927, the civilian population of Dęblin and Irena was 4,860, including 3,060 Jews. Beginning in 1927, Dęblin housed the Polish Air Force Academy, whose airfield was one of the largest in Poland. In 1936 and 1937, there were some incidents in which non-Jewish merchants vandalized their Jewish competitors' shops.
German invasion
During the German invasion of Poland which started World War II in Europe, the Luftwaffe bombed Dęblin between 2 and 7 September 1939, targeting the military airfield, Polish Army ammunition stores, and a nearby bridge over the Vistula. Most Polish soldiers left the town on 7 September; on 11 September the remaining Polish forces detonated the ammunition and withdrew. The German Army arrived on 12 or 20 September. Many residents, both Jews and other residents of the area, had fled to escape the aerial bombardment. In the following weeks, most returned at the urging of the Germans. The Jews found that their properties had been ransacked and plundered. They were conscripted into forced-labor units that cleared up the bomb damage and repaired some of the buildings, and the Jewish community was forced to pay a fine of 20,000 zlotys. During the German occupation, Dęblin and Irena became part of the Lublin District of the General Governorate occupation region. In late 1939, Jews were required to wear armbands with the Star of David, and some were conscripted for forced labor in Janiszów, Bełżec, and Pawłowice.
At the end of the year, the German occupiers forced Jews to form a ("Jewish Council"), as an interface between the Jewish community and Nazi demands. The was formed later than others in the region and had its offices on Bankowa Street. The first officials worked to reduce the impact of German demands and warned residents of searches. According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, the first chair of the , Leizer Teichman, was dismissed in early 1941; survivors reported that he and his secretary were deported to Wąwolnica with their families after trying to bribe policemen. The was temporarily run by Kalman Fris, who resigned after a few months and was replaced by Vevel Shulman in August, and then by a Konin native named Drayfish in September 1941. According to Israeli historian David Silberklang, "Szymon Drabfisz" was the first chair and Teichman the second.
Ghetto
A Nazi ghetto was established in Irena in November 1940 or early 1941, probably on the orders of Kurt Lenk, the region's new land commissioner. Some Jews were forced to move from their homes to the ghetto. The motive was probably to keep Jews away from the two nearby military installations, a Luftwaffe airfield and a German Army base, which were filled with troops in preparation for the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. The decree establishing the ghetto was not formally issued until 1942. Until 1942, Irena was an open ghetto (there was no physical fence, although the penalty for unauthorized departure was death) consisting of six streets. Its boundaries were initially Okólna Street, the Irenka River, Bankowa Street, and Staromiejska Street. Staromiejska Street was removed from the ghetto in September 1942; its residents moved to Bankowa. Initially, non-Jews were allowed to enter and perhaps live in the ghetto, so many of the Jews were able to survive by trading material goods for food with them. A Polish-language secular school, run by Aida Milgroijm-Citronbojm, instructed 70 to 100 pupils. The Jewish Ghetto Police maintained order in the ghetto, and on the outside it was guarded by a ("Special Services") unit consisting of local (ethnic Germans) and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. The unit was known for beating, humiliating, and killing ghetto inmates.
In late 1941, non-Jewish Poles were banned from entering the ghetto, resulting in waste piling up and typhus and dysentery epidemics. The sick were treated at a thirty-bed hospital run by Isaar Kawa, a doctor from Konin; with the help of non-Jewish doctors, medicines were imported from Warsaw. Simultaneously, the Germans imposed new restrictions: the use of stoves was banned, winter clothing was confiscated, and fuel imports were forbidden. More Jews began to leave the ghetto to obtain essentials, resulting in twenty young women being discovered outside the ghetto and killed. Because conditions were better in the Lublin District than in Warsaw, some Jews fled to towns there, including Irena; twenty Jews were executed for being unregistered refugees. The s leadership was altered again as Drayfish was executed, accused of filing complaints with the Puławy County administration; he was replaced by the businessman Yisrael Weinberg.
In March 1941, 3,750 Jews lived in the ghetto, including 565 who were not from the area. These consisted mainly of Jews expelled from Puławy and the German-annexed Reichsgau Wartheland, as well as some Jews who had come to live with relatives to avoid being trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto. Overcrowding was severe; there were 7–15 people per room. More Jews arrived in May 1941: 1,000 from the ghettos at Warsaw, Częstochowa, and Opole, although they were not housed in the ghetto but at work sites in the area. On 13 and 14 May 1942, two transports totalling 2,042 Slovak Jews arrived from Prešov. Although they brought food with them, they were unused to the harsh conditions and many died of typhus due to the poor sanitation. More than 2,000 Jews were brought to Irena from nearby towns, having survived the liquidation of their communities because they had been selected to work. These included 300 people from Ryki, 300 from Gniewoszów and Zwoleń, and a group from Stężyca. Other Jews had entered the ghetto after escaping roundups in Baranów, Ryki, Gniewoszów, and Adamów (from early October). In August, 5,800 Jews were reported to be living in the ghetto, of whom only 1,800 were from Dęblin.
Forced labor
Until late 1942, Jews earned wages as forced laborers, except those who were conscripted by the municipality for tasks such as street cleaning or snow clearing. Some Jews worked for German companies such as Schwartz and Hochtief, contracted by the Wehrmacht to do construction on the military bases in the town. The Ostbahn contracted Schultz to improve the railway between Lublin and Warsaw, a project which employed 300 Jews beginning in June 1941. Working conditions at this site were very harsh, with Jews forced to work twelve hours each day. However, most Jews worked for the German Army or the Luftwaffe; women and children grew food for the military. Dęblin Fortress, which had been taken over by the German Army and where around 200 Jews from the ghetto worked, was the site of Stalag 307, a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, from 10 July 1941, and also for French POWs in 1942 and Italian POWs in 1943–1944. An estimated 80,000 Soviet prisoners were imprisoned there; all died within a few months of starvation and disease. The Jews who worked there saw prisoners held in worse conditions than their own. The Jews from Dęblin and Irena tried to take the best jobs; 200 of the Slovak deportees ended up working for the municipality. An additional 200 Slovaks worked for the Schultz firm following an expansion. Survivors recalled that although German soldiers supervising the forced laborers tended to treat them relatively well, some ethnic Polish supervisors beat Jews, and the Ukrainian guards at the railway project were especially harsh, threatening prisoners with death.
In May 1941, in preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe commissioned the firm Autheried to improve the airfield. They recruited 200 Jewish workers in Opole, many of whom were Austrian Jews who had been deported from Vienna in February 1941 and wanted to escape the harsh conditions in Opole. These Jews, as well as another four hundred recruited in Irena and the Lipowa 7 camp in Lublin, and 500 ethnic Polish workers, worked twelve hours a day levelling the runway and building roads, walls, air-raid shelters, and earth fortifications. They also built a barbed-wire-enclosed complex adjacent to the runway for artisans to work in. Following the completion of the project in October, the workers were dispersed to various projects around the town, an action which may have been related to the typhus epidemic. Some of the Jews from Vienna stayed at the airfield, having obtained permits to work on gravel transportation and building fuel tanks; they were the nucleus for the later labor camp. After the first deportation from the Irena ghetto on 6 May 1942, additional Jews tried to secure permits, often obtained through bribery, to avoid deportation. By October 1942, the camp had 543 legal residents. At this point, there were five forced-labor camps around Dęblin: the Luftwaffe camp, the fortress, the train station (300 Jews), Lipova Street (200 Jews and ethnic Poles), and another near the municipal boundary (300 Jews).
Deportation, murder, and liquidation First deportation