Piaski

About twenty kilometres southeast of Lublin lies a small town called Piaski. At the outbreak of the Second World War about 4000 Jews live in the town, which corresponded about 70 percent of the inhabitants. There were synagogues, Jewish prayer houses, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish libraries and a Jewish school. The town was first occupied by Soviet Union but handed over to the Germans in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in which Poland was divided between Germany and Soviet Union. 

When the Germans took over control of Piaski, anti-Jewish restrictions were immediately imposed that restricted or deprived the Jews of their rights. A small ghetto to which the town’s Jews were forced to move was set up in spring 1940. Initially it was not shielded from the outside world, but this changed in autumn of 1940 when the ghetto was fenced in. Only with special documents it was possible to move freely between the ghetto and the outside world. In addition to Jews from Piaski, about 500 German Jews were deported to the ghetto. Overcrowding, inadequate dwellings, lack of supplies, food and medicines contributed to the spread of diseases.  

In spring 1942, the deportation of Jews from Europe to Piaski ghetto was intensified. Just as the ghetto in Izbica, Piaski became a transit ghetto for Jews deported to extermination camps in the east. Two trains with Jews departed to Belzec, the first in March, 1942, and the second in April, 1942, in total about 5500 Jews. In November 1942, about 5,000 Jews were sent to Sobibor extermination camp where and murdered. Same month, about 1,000 Jews were murdered at the new Jewish cemetery in Piaski. After this action, about a hundred Jews remained in the ghetto and they were sent to a camp in Trawniki. When this was completed the ghetto was liquidated.