Deportations in early 1942 - "Aktion Reinhard" and
other killing operations
Izbica
Between April 9 and June 5, 1942, altogether four deportation transports with 4,000 Jewish men, women and children aboard went from Vienna Aspang Station to Izbica. The village of Izbica is situated about 18 km south of the Kreisstadt Krasnystow in Lublin district, whose original population of about 6,000 was about 90 percent Jewish. By means of deportations from other parts of Poland, from the "Protectorate" (Austrians among them), from the old "Reich" and from Vienna the number of Jewish residents rose at times to 12,000.
Most probably to make room for the new arrivals about 2,200 people were deported from Izbica to Belzec extermination camp as early as March 24, 1942.
After a gap of a few months an "Umsiedlungsstab" (resettlement unit) of the SS took over the organisation of the deportations in the summer of 1942. From summer 1942 at the latest, Izbica seems to have functioned as a kind of "waiting room" for the Belzec extermination camp, whose intake was determined by the capacity of the Belzec gas chambers. On October 15, 1942, 10,000 Jews were hoarded together at Izbica railway station and 5,000 taken away. During this "selection", there occured a massacre in the course of which about 500 people were shot.
Of the 4,000 Austrian Jews deported to Izbica not one survived.
Toska Feuchtbaum (born on April 8, 1935) and her mother Ryfka (born
on December 17, 1892) were deported to Izbica on May 12, 1942, and killed. Toska's father Anschel Feuchtbaum
(born on April 14, 1894) survived Dachau und Buchenwald.
Helene Rosenberg was born on May 9, 1891. She was deported to Izbica on May 15, 1942, from where she
never returned.
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