News
Polish victims of ethnic cleansing by Nazi Germans visited Auschwitz Memorial
On May 5, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum played host to 51 residents of the village of Skierbieszów and the vicinity. They and their families were members of the local branch of the Polish Union of Former Nazi Penitentiary and Concentration Camp prisoners.
They included a large contingent of "Zamość Region Children"—the victims of ethnic cleansing carried out on a mass scale by the German occupation authorities in 1942-43. After expelling the Poles, the Germans turned their homesteads, along with all the furnishings and livestock, over to German settlers brought in from other locations such as Romania.
The Polish victims of ethnic cleansing were sent to special transit camps, the largest of which was in the city of Zamość. After their families were broken up and they were separated from their relatives, the Poles were deported to slave labor in Germany or to concentration camps. Many members of the visiting group lost their parents or other relatives in Auschwitz.
