In September 1939, the town was captured during the German invasion of Poland and the persecution of Jews began with drafts into forced labor and the establishment of a Judenrat ("Jewish Council").

Unusually, the labor camp operated by the Luftwaffe—employing, at its peak, about a thousand Jews—was allowed to exist until 22 July 1944, less than a week before the area was captured by the Red Army.

Dęblin and Irena [pl][a] (Yiddish: מאדזשיץ, Modzhitz)[3] are located 70 kilometers (40 mi) northwest of Lublin in Poland,[2] at the confluence of the Vistula and Wieprz rivers and at an important junction on the Lublin–Warsaw rail line.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the area was a center of Hasidic Judaism; most Jews followed the Modzitz dynasty, named after the town of Irena, and there were also Gur Hasidim.

[3] Many Jews made their living as peddlers, shopkeepers, or artisans (especially in leatherwork and metalwork) and later participated in the development of the town[clarification needed] as a summer resort.

[9] During the German invasion of Poland which started World War II in Europe, the Luftwaffe bombed Dęblin between 2 and 7 September 1939,[2] targeting the military airfield, Polish Army ammunition stores, and a nearby bridge over the Vistula.

They were conscripted into forced-labor units that cleared up the bomb damage and repaired some of the buildings, and the Jewish community was forced to pay a fine of 20,000 zlotys.

According to the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, the first chair of the Judenrat, Leizer Teichman, was dismissed in early 1941; survivors reported that he and his secretary were deported to Wąwolnica with their families after trying to bribe policemen.

The Judenrat was run temporarily by Kalman Fris, who resigned after a few months and was replaced by Vevel Shulman in August and then a Konin native named Drayfish in September 1941.

The motive was probably to keep Jews away from the two nearby military installations, a Luftwaffe airfield and a German Army base, which were filled with troops in preparation for the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.

The Judenrat's leadership was altered again as Drayfish was executed, accused of filing complaints with the Puławy County administration; he was replaced by the businessman Yisrael Weinberg.

[16] Until late 1942, Jews earned wages as forced laborers, except those who were conscripted by the municipality for tasks such as street cleaning or snow clearing.

Some Jews worked for German companies such as Schwartz and Hochtief, contracted by the Wehrmacht to do construction on the military bases in the town[clarification needed].

[11] Dęblin Fortress, which had been taken over by the German Army and where around 200 Jews from the ghetto worked,[8] was the site of Stalag 307, a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, from 10 July 1941.

[16] Survivors recalled that although German soldiers supervising the forced laborers tended to treat them relatively well, some ethnic Polish supervisors beat Jews, and the Ukrainian guards at the railway project were especially harsh, threatening prisoners with death.

[26] These Jews, as well as another four hundred recruited in Irena and the Lipowa 7 camp in Lublin,[11][26] and 500 ethnic Polish workers, worked twelve hours a day levelling the runway and building roads, walls, air-raid shelters, and earth fortifications.

[11][26] Some of the Jews from Vienna stayed at the airfield, having obtained permits to work on gravel transportation and building fuel tanks; they were the nucleus for the later labor camp.

[16] Around 2,300 to 2,500 Jews from Dęblin—mainly the elderly and families with small children—were marched to the Dęblin train station (some 2.5 km (1.6 mi) away) at 18:00 and sent to Sobibór extermination camp.

[14] During the next two days, more than four thousand Jews from north Puławy County—200 from Bobrowniki (6 May), 1,800 from Ryki (7 May), 125 from Stężyca (7 May), 1,500 from Baranów (8 May) and 500 from Łysobyki (8 May)—were also marched to Dęblin and deported to Sobibór.

[8][16] Hundreds of Jews were still alive in the remaining labor camps in Puławy County, but they were murdered during Operation Harvest Festival (2–3 November 1943).

[43][44] When it was possible, Wenkert negotiated with the authorities and paid bribes to avoid punishment; he also consulted respected prisoners in cases where the matter had not come to German attention.

However, when he thought there was no other option and the survival of the camp was in the balance, Wenkert turned Jews accused of wrongdoing over to the Germans even though he knew that this would result in their deaths.

[42][48] Residents received food rations of about 1,700 kilocalories daily (enough to live), weekly baths, and medical care, and were allowed to practice their religion.

[27][49] The presence of 100 young children—whose existence was justified as increasing the productivity of their parents—was particularly unusual and not matched elsewhere in the Lublin District after Operation Harvest Festival.

[51] Wenkert managed to get religious Jews exempted from working on Shabbat and allowed a chevra kadisha society to operate, burying the dead according to Jewish law.

[54][55] The Jews remaining in Prešov hired couriers (non-Jews from the Polish–Slovak border) to travel to the camp regularly until it was dissolved, carrying letters and bringing valuables and money.

[59] Several members of the Kowalczyk peasant family were honored as Righteous Among the Nations for sheltering nine Jews who had escaped from the Łuków ghetto and the Dęblin camp on their farm in Rozłąki [pl], from late 1943 to mid-1944.

[41] Since no one was willing to volunteer, the first transport carried about 200 people who had few connections in the camp, including single adults and fifteen children between three and six years of age.

Overall, luck played a major role in the fortuitous combination of Jewish leadership, relatively friendly Germans, and the evacuation of the camp to Częstochowa rather than Auschwitz-Birkenau.

[73] Some of the Jewish survivors, who attempted to return home in January 1945, were told by the local Milicja Obywatelska police chief that it was illegal for them to settle in the town[clarification needed].