Death March
The Death March, 1939.
On Friday, December 1, 1939, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the Germans expelled about two thousand Jews from the city of Chełm. The Germans ordered them to sing and run. At four o’clock in the morning, the remnants of the convoy reached the suburbs of Hrubieszow. That Sabbath evening, preparations began to include the Jews of Hrubieszow in the march as well. .
In Hrubieszow they were not afraid of the order and the next day, at 8 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, more than two thousand Jews arrived to the spot they were ordered to assemble in. At about noon, an SS officer appeared, who demanded that they hand over all of their papers and valuables, except for twenty zlotys, which they were allowed to keep in their pockets. The Jews were ordered to line up in two columns and maintain a gap between the columns, into which the surviving Jews from Chelm were marched. The sight of the people of Halam terrified the Jews of the Hrubieszow.
At one o’clock on Saturday afternoon, a convoy of Hrubieszow Jews left the city, heading for the Bug River, which served as the border between the territories controlled by the Soviet Union and those controlled by the Germans. The Jews marched through fields and dirt roads, which were filled with deep mud. Those who were too weak to continue were shot, and more than forty Jews drowned in the mud. The following day, the convoy continued moving, with the Germans constantly shooting at the Jews. When the Jews arrived at the Russian border, the Russian soldiers did not allow them to cross it and ordered them to return to German territory. The Jews begged the Russians to let them remain in Soviet territory, to avoid being killed by the Germans, but their pleas were ignored, and they were forced to return to German territory.
During the four days of the death march, about 1,500 Jews were murdered. Most of the Jews who managed to cross the river and the Soviet border were eventually deported to Siberia, and they survived the war. Some of the Jews who were deported to German territory managed to return to their homes.
In recent years, four mass graves along the march route have been mapped and marked by the Polish Last Remembrance Association, under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate of Poland.
From “The Bridge on the Bug River” (written by Shalom Omri about the Death March).
The year was 1939. The Germans had conquered Poland, and carved it into German and Russian zones. The border was set at the Bug river, not far from the town of Hrubieszow. This was my hometown, a typical Jewish town, situated in the Lublin region of central Poland, about 150 kilometers south of Majdanek.
On an ordinary day in December 1939, a notice was distributed by the Germans. The notice ordered all men aged 15 to 65 to present themselves at a field near the town the next day, at 7:00 a.m. Anyone who failed to appear would be executed. The notice provided no details. Rumors spread that the Germans were going to recruit men for forced labor, but no one knew for certain.
We all naively assembled that morning, on what would later become an infamous day: the beginning of the “death march” for the Jews of the towns of Chelm and Hrubieszow. The first two days of the march were worse than anything we could have imagined. But the third day was the most horrific, and I will recount it now.
I was a 17-year-old boy on the third day of the death march. The deported Jews had reached the point of complete exhaustion, after marching rapidly for two days, in the freezing cold, without food or water. The pace slowed down as people neared collapse.
The Germans quickly found a diabolical solution to the problem. Four Gestapo officers positioned themselves at the rear of the group and began shooting the slowest walkers. Panic broke out. Seeing those who fell and were murdered, the ones in the back sprinted desperately to escape the bloodbath. The Germans, laughing loudly, continued shooting.
Many people died that day, and their bodies were left scattered along the muddy, unpaved road. One of the last victims was my uncle, Israel. He could no longer keep walking. Mustering whatever strength I had left, I tried to carry him so that he would appear to be moving on his own, but the Germans weren’t fooled. They pulled him aside, and shot him in the back of the neck.
By the end of that day, we found ourselves standing near the bridge over the Bug River. A few hundred starving, exhausted and stunned Jews were all that remained of the thousands who had begun the march three days earlier.
I felt that we had reached the end of the road. I was convinced that within moments the Germans would line us up and shoot us, just as they had done to all those who could no longer walk. To our surprise, the Gestapo officer announced that he was giving us one last chance: we would be allowed to cross the bridge to the Russian side. The Bug River, as mentioned, was the mutually agreed border between German-occupied Poland and Soviet-occupied Poland.
Soviet soldiers stood on the other side of the river. They were surprised to see us, but they adamantly refused to let us enter their territory. Our hopes of reaching safety and freedom quickly faded. The Russians blocked our path, and tried to push us back into the hands of the Gestapo. With passively resisted with whatever strength we had left, lying on the ground and declaring that we would not return to the German side. The Soviets were forced to call in reinforcements, and after hours of struggle, a battalion of Soviet soldiers dragged us back to the other side, one by one. Our cries and pleas fell on deaf ears. This scene remains deeply etched in my memory. Within my soul, I felt the terrible tragedy of a nation without a homeland and without any protection.
Four Soviet soldiers dragged me by my hands and feet. I was young and strong, and I tried to resist, but to no avail. Hungry, thirsty, physically broken, and utterly humiliated, I was thrown back onto German soil. But there was no time for despair. We had to act quickly and find a way to escape and save ourselves. A small group of young men, including myself, fled the area and found shelter in the house of a local farmer until nightfall. At midnight, under the cover of darkness, the farmer led us to a narrower part of the river. We entered the freezing water and swam to the Soviet side.
At 1:00 a.m., we reached a small village. We knocked on the door of a farmer’s house to ask for help. The Polish farmer was shocked to see a group of wet and freezing young men. He fell to his knees and crossed himself, and offered us a shelter. We remained there until the next morning.
That night, I swore to myself that I would never let such a thing happen to me again.