People from the Zamość Region

According to the Third Reich’s authorities, Zamość region located in the south-eastern part of the Lublin voivodeship, was meant to become a foothold of the new German colonies in the east, a “Germanic bulwark” for further expansion. That area – considered “indigenously German” by the Nazis – lied at the junction of the inner Reich with occupied Soviet territories. In 1941, the implementation of “Generalplan Ost” began there – the so-called Genera Plan for the East. It was a long-term programme of settlement and colonisation in the central-eastern Europe aiming at providing the “living space” for Germans. Its span stretched from Transylvania up to the Baltic states, and assumed mass deportations and displacements of their original population. It is estimated that around 100,000 people were affected by those polices around the Zamość region alone in the years 1941-1943.

The first operation stage was conducted in November 1941 and the second from November 1942 to March 1943. The displaced persons were first examined in the transit camp in Zamość and then deported to Auschwitz or deep into the Third Reich. Children that fit into the Nazi racial standards were taken away from their parents and subjected to Germanisation. Kids that were deemed “racially worthless” were shipped away into distant parts of the General Government. The final phase of the displacement operation took place between 24 June and August 1943. Around 9,000 women, children, and men from the Zamość, Hrubieszów, Biłgoraj, and Tomaszów counties were deported to KL Lublin.