Disaster of the Lukow Jews

This short newsreel was shot in March 1940 in Lukow by Dr. Wilhelm Mersmann, a German surgeon, who also served for the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department in the General Government (the Nazi term for Poland) . This movie is absolutely unique as it shows the world that would cease to exist shortly after the film was made. Especially painful is the children scene. They are smiling at the cameraman, showing something to him. They don’t realize that people like this gentleman with the camera would soon sentence them to death…

The movie was posted on the Karl Höffkes Agency portal on Jan. 31, 2013.

The Holocaust in Lukow

During World War II, the Jewish community in Lukow was decimated. Before the Jews of Lukow disappeared, the town was a transit point on the way to the gas chambers for thousands of Jews from various regions of Poland and even from abroad. In May 1942, over 2,000 Jews from Slovakia were sent to Łuków.

The first mass murders of the Jews of Lukow started in March 1942, when the Germans shot forty-seven of them. Next, forty-nine were killed on the 31st of April. During that summer, Jews were prohibited to leave the town. Everyone who broke this ban was killed.

The systematic liquidation of the Jewish community in Lukow started on 5th October 1942. At that time, 5,000 people were sent to the death camp in Treblinka and also five-hundred were killed on the spot. At that time, the last rabbi (since 1937) of the Jewish community in Lukow, Aaron Note Freiberg, was killed. Next, two-thousand people were transported to Treblinka on the 8th of October. After that action, the size of the ghetto in Łuków was reduced. The Jews from the neighborhood villages of Kock, Wojcieszkow, Adamów, Stanin, Tuchowicz, Trzebieszow and Ulan were next sent to the town. On 26-27 October and 7-11 November, three-thousand people were transported to Treblinka and two-hundred Jews were shot in front of the town hall and at the Jewish cemetery.

The Jews who were still alive were returned to the ghetto in December 1942, their living area confined to just a few houses. The ghetto was finally liquidated on 2nd May 1943. In this way then, the Jewish community in Lukow had completely disappeared.

The plaque on the obelisk reads: "In commemoration of the Jewish partisans and victims murdered by the Nazis in Lukow and vicinity in the years 1939-1949." (the date, 1949, shown here in Polish, should be 1943. This is inscribed correctly in the Hebrew/Yiddish translation.)

Source: http://www.zydzi_lukow.republika.pl/history.htm

More photos of Lukow on website Lukow Historia

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