Warsaw/Lublin - July 13, 2010

View from Room at the Grand Hotel Lublin

Facade of Building in Old Town, Lublin

Old Town, Lublin

Biblical Art on Church, Old Town, Lublin

The day began with the sun shining as we made our way from Warsaw to Lublin. Lublin is the ninth largest city of Poland. The city's history goes back as far as the 10th century when a significant fortification existed there. One of Poland's most prominent Jewish communities was established in Lublin in the 16th century. In 1518 a yeshiva was founded in Lublin to which students came from all over Europe. At the end of the 18th century Lublin became a Hasidic center. Throughout the 19th century, Jews constituted more than half of Lublin's inhabitants. Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin opened its doors in 1930 and instantly became a center of Jewish learning. A ghetto was established in Lublin in March, 1941 with around 34,000 inhabitants. Lublin and its district played an important role in the German plan of annihilation of the Jews. Lublin was the headquarters of the Operation Reinhard, the SS-run program to kill all the Jews in the four major death caps - Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Majdanek. A majority of the 3 million Polish Jews killed in the Holocaust went through these caps or died during the deportation process. Almost all of the Lublin Jews were killed by the end of the war - about 30,000 were killed in Belzec - mostly between March 17 and April 11, 1942.