Puławy Ghetto

Members of the Boys were imprisoned in a network of ghettos by the Nazis across eastern Europe between 1939-45.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The Boys and their families were forced to move from their homes and were held in ghettos in Nazi controlled Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where they spent years living in dire conditions. The ghettos were not designed for the vast numbers of people forced to find space to live within them. As a result, multiple families shared cramped and insanitary accommodation.

^{Holocaust Memorial in Puławy, Poland.}

Puławy is a city in eastern Poland, in Lesser Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship. To find out more about the area and the Boys who grew up there click here.

Overview

^{Sobibór extermination camp}

Virtually all of the Jewish inhabitants of Puławy were relocated from the city by the Germans at the end of 1939.

On 17–20 May 1942, about 2,000 Slovak Jews from Bardejov were brought to Puławy. Their fate is not known. It is likely that among the 500–1,000 Jews sent at the beginning of October from Końskowola and Puławy to KL Lublin (Majdanek camp), there were Slovak Jews.

The rest probably lost their lives in the Sobibór extermination camp.

In Puławy there was a labour camp at a sawmill, where up to 400 Jews were employed. From July 1943 the camp was managed by Otto Hantke. Most of the prisoners of this camp were murdered in November 1943 as part of the “Erntefest” action. Only a small group of prisoners were spared.

Memorialisation

Thanks to the efforts of the Nissenbaum Family Foundation and the Puławy landsmanshaft, there is a monument dedicated to the Jewish community at the war cemetery on ul. Dęblińska. For more information on visiting the region click here.