“We know for sure that uncle has the apartment near you almost ready You generally need to know that uncle intends to arrange a wedding at your place in the near future «and if any of it is left until morning» etc.” – an anonymous author wrote in a June 1942 letter from Włodawa “The apartment” is the Treblinka exterminaton camp still under construction by the Germans that the addressees had to have recognised a quote from the Book of Exodus God is commanding Moses and Aaron to kill a lamb as a sacrifice during Pesach There is a regulation not to leave the city for 7 days we live with the expectation of terrible blows for us will it be some kind of c[oncentration] camp The atmosphere in the city is just like before the akedah [holy sacrifice] – wrote Icchak from the kibbutz in Werbkowice near Hrubieszów to Henoch Gutman and the leadership of the Hechaluc-Dror youth organization in the Warsaw ghetto on 5 June 1942 the author of the letter referred to the sacrifice of Abraham "A ritual feast attended by over 30 people" is a shooting the Germans carried out executions terrorizing the Jewish population The Jews from Grabowiec were transported by the Germans to the Sobibór death camp in June 1942 with the exception of the sick and disabled who were murdered on the spot in the ghetto Jews from Włodawa were deported and murdered in Sobibór “The application of crypto-information had no practical significance for the fate of Jewish communities in German-occupied Poland,” writes Dr Resorting to crypto-information had purely psychological significance; it gave hope that thanks to the transmission of messages to break out of the circle of helplessness It also gave a sense of fulfilment of a duty towards family or friends who regardless of whether they could save themselves or not “capmaker” – because that is what “hitler” means in Yiddish and Daily Life in Interwar and Occupied Poland”Professional BackgroundMiranda Brethour is a PhD candidate in history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York Her research engages with the Holocaust in occupied Poland she received her master’s degree and honors bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Ottawa Brethour has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals she was a teaching fellow in the history department at Brooklyn College and worked on the intersection of Holocaust studies and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to examine Jewish survival strategies in the post-Aktionen period in Węgrów County Miranda Brethour was awarded an Alexander Grass Memorial Fellowship for her research project and Daily Life in Interwar and Occupied Poland.” Her project traces the Holocaust in the countryside of the Lublin region as narrated through the relationship between Jewish residents Brethour’s research focuses on village elders as pivotal figures and probes into the social dynamics of small communities the driving forces of inter-neighborhood violence and the role of rural institutions in normalizing and legitimizing violence against the Jews during the Holocaust in Poland she intends to use resources from the Claims Conference International Holocaust Documentation Archive While researching the intricate aspects of Jewish-gentile relations in occupied Poland Brethour employs various historical materials such as postwar court trials and administrative records created by the German occupation as well as a wide range of regional materials concerning the Lublin countryside Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies is a leading generator of new knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust the area of central Poland governed by the German civil authorities The second deportation took place in June 1942 and was carried out by Gestapo members from Sobibor who demanded workers for the death camp Polish and Ukrainian policemen also took part in this deportation or dragging them into the street and murdering them there A selection was held in the square in front of the sthiebel and 600 Jews who were found fit for labor were deported to Sobibor another 1,000 Jews from the Chełm ghetto were deported to Sobibor On 27 and 28 October a deportation to Wlodawa took place: some 3,300 Jews from the Chełm ghetto both local Jews and Jewish refugees were deported in this wave Polish and Ukranian policemen carried out the German commands and most of them were murdered along the way The few survivors to reach Wlodawa were subsequently deported to Sobibor Among those deported in this wave were several Jews from the Wojsławice ghetto who had arrived in Chełm earlier that month the SS and Ukrainian Police liquidated what remained of the ghetto in Chełm some 7,000 Jews were still living in the ghetto; almost 4,000 were deported to Sobibor and the remainder were shot on site On this day the 150 members of the Jewish Order Police were also shot Few of the Jews from Chełm remained alive after the liquidation; most of those who did were young Some 50 Jewish craftsmen were assigned to forced labor until they too were deported to Sobibor a few months later During the revolt of Jewish prisoners in the Sobibor extermination camp a number of Jews tried to reach the area of Chełm Most of the participants in the uprising were caught and murdered A minority managed to escape and join up with the partisans A small handful of Jews from Chełm served in the partisan units of the Polish Left which mobilized in the forests around Chełm In July 1944 Chełm was liberated by the Red Army A few dozen Jews had survived in hiding in what had been a magnificent Jewish community numbering some 15,000 the several hundred Jews who fled with the retreating Soviet forces at the beginning of the war were also spared but postwar antisemitism made this impossible In the 1990s some survivors from Chełm and their descendants initiated a renovation of the cemetery wall in Chełm and the establishment of a memorial in honor of the victims Before the Second World War nearly half of Chełm’s 30,000 residents had been Jewish Chelm’s current population of 70,000 does not include any Jews The Yad Vashem website had recently undergone a major upgrade The page you are looking for has apparently been moved We are therefore redirecting you to what we hope will be a useful landing page For any questions/clarifications/problems, please contact: webmaster@yadvashem.org.il This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page your new go-to podcast to spice up your weekday mornings with relevant news and behind-the-scenes from Brussels and beyond From the economy to the climate and the EU's role in world 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Elżbieta has made the two-hour drive from her home in Warsaw to close to the Polish-Belarussian border to go mushroom picking she arrived at her rented holiday home near the town of Włodawa to find it very different from the quiet rural idyl she knows so well a state of emergency had been declared and border guards now patrolled the entrance to the town After Belarus opened its borders to migrants and refugees wanting to cross into the EU and children made the dangerous crossing into Poland Poland’s right-wing government calls them “terrorists” and “sexual deviants” while Polish border guards call them “illegals” and brag in social media posts about how many they have “bagged” since the crisis began She has been personally involved in the rescue of migrants that have got into difficulty traversing the forests and swamps of this part of Poland three Syrian women were found nearly drowned in a swamp near the border “They had been in the forest for two weeks When she was found she was clinging to a piece of wood in the water,” Elżbieta told Euronews Elżbieta heard the women were in trouble and called the fire brigade and by the time she arrived the women had been rescued The border guards arrived and the women were taken first to a hospital in Włodawa and later to detention centres She does not know what happened to them after that nor the fact that she is increasingly involved in what is going on with the refugees at the border She told Euronews that they have physically prevented her from taking pictures the borderlands in Polish Kresy were where several religious and ethnic groups had lived for centuries alongside each other The remainder of a Tartar Muslim community still exists but much of the Jewish community was wiped out in the Second World War in Nazi concentration camps like Sobibor and Treblinka the treatment of the refugees here in Poland’s eastern borderlands is a chilling reminder of how people doing nothing in the face of injustice led to those darkest of times the railway tracks leading to it run alongside it,” Elżbieta said “When I talked with the border guards they had no idea about this They were from Kraków and Kielce and were as lost here as many of the refugees It was then I realised how the Holocaust was possible Email Sign-Up a vestige of the prewar Torah world who imbibed the fire of the gedolei olam of the prewar Torah world through the Torah he drank at their feet Rav Tuvia Goldstein zt”l bequeathed our generation the gift of his brilliance and clarity in Torah and the image of his superhuman hasmadah in Boro Park for more than three decades continuing to inspire his numerous talmidim and those who continue to drink from his Torah we glimpse into his remarkable life and impact in Boro Park of yesteryear Rav Tuvia was born in 1917 in the Eastern Polish town of Włodawa both of his parents contracted Typhus and were niftar when he was a young child of two years old He was taken in by his paternal grandparents Rav Yonah was a revered and beloved figure for all the Yidden in the region a native of Włodawa who learned under the town’s rov and was renowned for his superhuman hasmadah in Torah In the Glow of Rav Elchonon and Rav Boruch Ber Rav Tuvia began exhibiting a unique ehrlichkeit He was chosen as the leader of the local Pirchei Agudas Yisroel and as a young bochur he entered the Włodawa branch of Yeshiva Bais Yosef-Novardok He became close to Rav Elchonon and was zoche to be meshameish him for years even meriting to spend the leil haSeder at his home one year When Rav Shmuel Berenbaum arrived in Baranovitch it was Rav Tuvia who took him under his wing On his way home from yeshiva in Baranovitch he would stop in Brisk to meet with Rav Simcha Zelig Riger Rav Simcha Zelig had a son in Baranovitch who was friendly with Rav Tuvia and I conversed with him a lot,” he later related to his talmidim where he became attached to the Torah of his rebbi and this is what he would later transmit to his many talmidim on American shores “Der rebbe hott em zeyer leeb gehat – The rebbe loved him very much And he even stood up for Rav Tuvia once when he passed where he was learning.” Another talmid from Kamenitz related: “He was the shine in Rav Boruch Ber’s eyes!” As though to close the glorious chapter of his yeshiva years among the gedolim of yore one of Rav Tuvia’s final encounters with greatness was a trip he took to Vilna to visit Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky moments that would remain etched in his memory for the rest of his life Then came the great churban that robbed him of so much – his learning and the world of Torah on the European landscape He spent those years in Siberia and only survived through great nissim She would remain by his side as he embarked on his next half century of harbotzas Torah He landed with his rebbetzin on the Lower East Side one Erev Shabbos in 1947 Rebbetzin Shima Feinstein immediately arranged an apartment for the couple His subsequent kesher with her illustrious husband Rav Moshe would call him on many occasions—sometimes in middle of the night—to discuss complex shailos Rav Tuvia taught at Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Joseph for decades The yeshiva was opened in a shul at 2032 62nd Street (readers of this column will remember that it was once the shul of Rav Shepsel Friedman of Stavisk) These shuls were experiencing a decline in membership so the members of the shul saw a mutual benefit in bringing in the yeshiva began a new chapter of three decades in which Rav Tuvia charted a path serving as a demus of Gadol who exuded a bren in Torah Ga’onus and novelty in chidush—in addition to the fiery Torah that he gave over as a direct channel from his heilige Rebbeim—and these qualities were only matched by his no’am hamiddos the people of the neighborhood opened a kehillah inside the Shul He did so with dedication and with exemplary middos and consideration for every individual It was this fusion that forged hundreds of talmidim over the years who became talmidim for life They saw in Rav Tuvia a “sugya” that could be studied for life The image of Rav Tuvia bent over his seforim and his writing at Camp Ma Na Vu is one that will remain etched in the memories of thousands of campers who will remain inspired by it rarely leaving him unattended for a moment he left behind a family of gedolim baTorah the volumes of Emek Halacha which are still being published and a legacy of a lifetime dedicated completely to Torah and its transmission in Boro Park of yesteryear counting towards Shavuos and striving each day to refine ourselves   Most newly inaugurated presidents are judged by their ability to start accomplishing the main goals upon which they campaigned for office within their first   It was pretty quiet in Eretz Yisroel these past two weeks   From Sunny to Overcast… and Back Again After a while It starts with a creeping sense of malaise   Remembering the Fallen Soldiers It happens every year: News photographers and cameraman stake out a few chareidi population centers on Yom Hazikaron   We are rarely moved by a halachic teshuvah Yated Neeman was founded in 1987 as an independent Orthodox Jewish weekly newspaper people have been turning to the Yated for responsible More than an interesting and enlightening read the Yated is part of the daily life of the community Read More >> Feb 17, 2025 | Energy & Climate Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers We cannot do what we do without your support Measurements indicate that the temperature last night dropped to -41.1°C (roughly -42°F) in one part of Poland’s southern Tatra mountains that would be the lowest temperature ever recorded in the country The finding was observed as part of a project run by researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań providing real-time tracking of weather conditions in the Tatras It showed the temperature dropping to -41.13°C slightly lower than Poland’s current official record low of -41°C which was observed in the city of Siedlce in 1940 Miało być zimno. I było. Ostatecznie Litworowy Kocioł zanotował -41.1°C. To najniższa temperatura zanotowana kiedykolwiek na ziemiach polskich. Można założyć, że to miejsce jako jedyne w PL jest w stanie osiągnąć -50°C. @extremetemps https://t.co/NDMAOXrfFj pic.twitter.com/vQMB3DgaIv — meteoprognoza.pl🇵🇱 (@MeteoprognozaPL) February 17, 2025 Last night’s low was recorded in a place called Litworowy Kocioł a glacial cirque located around 1,800m (5,906 feet) above sea level that has a specific microclimate making it consistently one of the coldest places in Poland Forecasts indicate that the temperature there may fall to even lower levels in coming days Experts note that Litworowy Kocioł is not representative of Poland’s climate as a whole last night also saw temperatures fall to exceptionally low levels of between -15°C and -20°C in many parts of the country The eastern town of Włodawa saw a temperature of -22°C this morning The Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW) has issued warnings of low temperatures continuing tonight and tomorrow O godzinie 7:00 temperatura odczuwalna jest bardzo niska na stacji synoptycznej Włodawa wynosi -22°C Temperatura powietrza najniższa jest na stacji Kozienice -17,4°C, najcieplej jest w Helu -2,7°Chttps://t.co/cfExgGCbMz#IMGW pic.twitter.com/EfZx6Lceps — IMGW-PIB METEO POLSKA (@IMGWmeteo) February 17, 2025 Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications , , Karol Nawrocki even suggested that the state security services were involved in creating the scandal , , The 1,200 square metre national symbol was unfurled on the beach in Międzyzdroje , , The proportion of Poles saying the US has a positive influence on the world has also fallen to its lowest recorded level Apr 30, 2025 | , , , That response will include “large Polish and NATO exercises in Poland” Apr 29, 2025 | , , , Those employed in Poland work on average the third-longest hours in the European Union Apr 28, 2025 | , , , , Westinghouse and Bechtel were first chosen in 2022 as partners on the 192 billion zloty ($51 billion) project please consider helping us to continue and expand it [email protected] Copyright © 2025 Notes From Poland | Design jurko studio | Code by 2sides.pl Senior Research Fellow at the Global Europe Centre ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Weronika Strzyżyńska is currently studying journalism at Goldsmiths as a Scott Trust Bursary recipient She  has written on issues immigration and Brexit for New Statesman and Prospect Agnieszka Wądołowska is managing editor of Notes from Poland She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and assistant professor of history at the Pedagogical University of Krakow The Independent and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Stanley Bill is the founder and editor-at-large of Notes from Poland.He is also Senior Lecturer in Polish Studies and Director of the Polish Studies Programme at the University of Cambridge Stanley has spent more than ten years living in Poland He founded Notes from Poland in 2014 as a blog dedicated to personal impressions cultural analysis and political commentary He is committed to the promotion of deeper knowledge and understanding of Poland He is the Chair of the Board of the Notes from Poland Foundation ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Professor of European Studies at Oxford University ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Professor at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Executive Director of Taube Family Foundation ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR the situation at the border between Poland and Belarus has become tense The actions of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime are an attempt to destabilise the situation in Poland and an instrumental game played at the cost of the immigrants We are responsible for the safety of Poles and the tightness of our borders at the request of the Council of Ministers President Andrzej Duda has issued a regulation declaring a state of emergency in certain towns and villages in the Podlaskie and Lubelskie Voivodeships The state of emergency has been declared for 30 days and concerns only an approx 3-km-long strip along the border with Belarus President Andrzej Duda has issued a regulation declaring a 30-day state of emergency in parts of the Podlaskie and Lubelskie Voivodeships The regulation has been issued at the request of the Council of Ministers the President has submitted the regulation to the Sejm Marshal Elżbieta Witek has set the date for an additional meeting of the Sejm; it will take place on 6 September The Polish Government and authorities are constantly monitoring and analysing the situation at our eastern border We are also taking adequate measures to ensure the safety of our citizens On of these measures is the declaration of a state of emergency Our goal is to make sure that our officers can act and perform their duties freely while the disturbance in the life of border region residents is minimal The state of emergency has been declared for 30 days It covers 115 towns and villages in the Podlaskie Voivodeship and 68 in the Lubelskie Voivodeship The steps have met with understanding and support on the part of local government authorities as we are taking them solely in the interest of safety of our citizens especially the residents of the border regions The situation at the border with Belarus is critical and tense Alexander Lukashenko’s regime is playing an instrumental game at the cost of immigrants 10 thousand Iraqi citizens have been brought to Minsk over the last few weeks 3 thousand people tried to illegally enter the territory of Poland and the European Union The Polish Government is responsible not only for our citizens and the safety of our country The border between Poland and Belarus is the external border of the European Union which we must protect in accordance with our obligations towards our allies Its breach would cause hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the European Union - Regulation of the Council of Ministers of  2 September 2021 on limitation of freedoms and rights in relation to declaration of a state of emergency - Regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of 2 September 2021 on declaration of a state of emergency in parts of the Podlaskie Voivodeship and in parts of the Lubelskie Voivodeship - Regulation of the Minister of the Interior and Administration of 2 September 2021 on limitation of the right to own firearms, ammunition and explosives as well as other types of weapons Home   News   Article A Holocaust survivor’s moving story emphasised the horrors of the Final Solution to students at Bishop’s Stortford High School Hannah Lewis has become a regular visitor to the London road campus and spoke to Year 12 pupils again last week She spent her own childhood in the Nazi labour camps of the Second World War and talked for an hour about her memories of that terrible time and the brutality she endured She shared treasured family photographs with the children and they listened in stunned silence as she recounted the death of her mother Hannah was born in June 1937 in the small market town of Wlodawa her family was prosperous and her life was comfortable until war broke out In 1942 the Nazis began taking the Jews of Wlodawa to either nearby Sobibór extermination camp or various labour camps In 1943 Hannah and her family were rounded up and forcibly marched to Adampol Her father managed to escape and joined the partisans while Hannah and her mother remained in the labour camp Hannah fell ill with a high temperature and suspected typhoid so her mother would not leave when her father came to warn them about a Nazi killing squad Haya was shot and Hannah remained in the camp until she was liberated by a Soviet soldier she was reunited with her father and came to live in London in 1949 Now a mother of four with eight grandchildren she was unable to talk about her ordeal for many years but now shares her experiences so future generation understand the impact of the Holocaust subject leader for religious studies and citizenship intelligent and graceful speaker and person Hannah is everything a human being should be She was recognised by the Queen in 2018 with an MBE “Hannah told the history of how her wonderful mother sacrificed her life for her when the evil of Nazism was outside where they were living Hannah’s story was also one of resilience both then and since.” He added: “Students were encouraged to always remember and never forget the Holocaust where so many people from so many different groups suffered persecution pass this history on their children and children’s children so the world never ever forgets Hannah’s mother who lives on through Hannah’s witness When the senior leadership team at St Albert the Great College informed me that I had been selected to attend the next Comenius meeting in Poland Our current project is entitled "Let's all smile at Europe" and this is our college's second educational adventure The objectives of this meeting were to evaluate this first year of our project discuss any existing problems and possible solutions and plan the second year of the project in earnest Representatives from all seven partner schools - Malta During our meeting we discussed the three major tasks we carried out this year; a collaborative tourist guide which was then exchanged with every participating country and the production of paintings with an artist Our last and most demanding task was working with local composers The whole process was professionally filmed and recorded by Elvio Cauchi A DVD was produced and exchanged with every partner school Still images of this DVD will also be uploaded on to the Website created specifically for the project One can access this Website at www.smile-at-europe.ik.org Both St Albert's and Szkola Podstawowa Gen Kleeberga have something in common - their students range from five- to 16-year-olds The Polish school is quite large and boasts extensive grounds and a well-equipped gym We went to all the classrooms and soon the children were happily singing Lanca Gejja w Ohra Sejra and dancing to the ageless Dawra Durella nationalities and language barriers forgotten We watched each other's DVDs and presented the school with souvenirs with a difference - work that had been made by our students during Open Day also linked to this year's Comenius theme - Local festivals and traditions We also found time to visit nearby Sobibor Death Camp an intense experience where only silent thoughts and prayers could do justice to what the place represents A barbeque by the lake on the last day was the cherry on the cake that crowned a week of friendship and group work please register for free or log in to your account.