Report on the Liquidation of the Jewish Population of Chełm

This is a testimony titled “Report about the December events in the Lublin region” by “Sabina,” dated February 17th, 1943. The Polish informant is a resident of Chełm who returned from the city on December 12th, 1942. She witnessed the total liquidation of Jews in Chełm in December 1942, when she was rounded up together with the Jews. The aktion commenced on December 5th and ended on December 25th. Of the roughly 11,000 Jews who lived in Chełm at the end of 1942, between 7,000 and 8,000 were murdered, mainly by transports to Sobibor, an extermination camp. About 3,000 managed to hide, flee, and join various partisan units. The informant who lived in the Jewish quarter was ordered to go out and stand with all Jews, and she observed how heavily armed Nazi SS men carried out the liquidation of the Jews. They used machine guns to shoot thousands of Jews gathered in the square in front of a church. To kill individual Jews who attempted to escape, they used revolvers and grenades. Civilian Germans took part in the murder of Jews, including the German mayor, who personally shot an escaping Jewish woman. The informant saw the unheard-of passivity with which the Jews awaited death. She was witness to hours of killings and beatings before she was let go. She states that in Chełm there was no looting of the apartments vacated by Jews because the penalty for this crime was immediate death. Several Poles who ignored the threat were shot on the spot.