Trawniki Labor Camp

   The Schutzstaffel (SS) established the camp, located southeast of Lublin, Poland, in the fall of 1941 to hold Soviet prisoners and Polish Jews. The Trawniki camp was part of a network of camps under the supervision of Odilo Globocnik. In the spring of 1942, Jews from the Greater Reich were brought to the camp, where many of them were brutalized; others were sent to the Belzec death camp or were shot in the forest near the camp. Following the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, the Fritz Schulz Works, which produced army uniforms and other necessities for the war effort, was moved to Trawniki along with its 10,000 workers. Included among the workers were Emanuel Ringelblum and 33 members of the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB). Following the revolt at Sobibor in October 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered the liquidation of all the camps in the Lublin district. Fearing similar uprisings in the camps, the Germans proceeded to murder some 43,000 Jews in the so-called Operation Erntefest. On 5 November 1943, the 10,000 Jewish prisoners of the Trawniki camp were brought to pits that had already been prepared, and killed. Led by the members of the Jewish Combat Organization, those Jews who belonged to the camp’s underground attempted resistance, but all were killed in battle. During its existence, approximately 20,000 Jews passed through the Trawniki labor camp.

   See also Lublin Ghetto; Oneg Shabbat.