Marek Kołcon

On 11 April 2016, together with the students of High School No. 2 in Zamość, I organized a ceremony on the “beetroot ramp” commemorating the seventy-fourth anniversary of the first deportation of Jews from the Zamość ghetto to the death camp in Bełżec. Two years later, on 16 October 2018, we unveiled an installation by the sculptor Bartłomiej Sęczawa,at the train station Zamość Starówka, which is a permanent commemoration of the extermination of Jews in Zamość. The installation consists of three cast-iron plaques placed on a platform slab with a text in Polish, Hebrew and English: “In 1942, trains transporting Jews from Zamość and surrounding towns to Nazi German death camps left from here. In memory of Polish, Czech, German and Austrian Jews who lived in the Zamość ghetto and were murdered between 1939 and 1942”. The commemoration was possible thanks to the support of Zamosc City Hall. It was financed from a grant from the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute and donations from Coordination Committe, Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz, Borussia Dortmund Supporters as well as from individual donors from Poland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the USA.

The ceremony began with a lecture at the Zamość town hall, in the “Consulatus” room. Alina Skibińska and Dariusz Libionka from the Center for Holocaust Research and Adam Kopciowski from the Department of Jewish Culture and History of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, the author of the Holocaust of Jews in Zamość, all attended the meeting. The unveiling ceremony at the Zamość Umschlagplatz was attended by: City Hall representatives and the city president Andrzej Wnuk, Michael Schudrich Chief Rabbi of Poland, Israel Scheck, president of the Zamosc Jews Landsmanschaft in Israel, representatives of Forum for dialogue, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw, the Museum – Memorial Site in Bełzec, Bildungswerk Stanislaw Hantz, fans of the Borussia Dortmund club, inhabitants of Zamość and young people from Zamość schools.

photos by J.Petelewicz

The participation of Borussia fans from Dortmund in the ceremony needs clarification. The Jews in Zamość ghetto were not only from Poland, but also from Czech Republic, Austria and Germany. On April 30, 1942, a transport of 781 German Jews left Dortmund to Zamosc. They reached the city on Sunday, May 3. Before the transport from Dortmund went to Zamosc, the Jews destined for deportation were placed in the Borussia-Dormund stadium.

For several years now, the club’s fans have been involved in preserving the memory of the deportees to the Zamość ghetto. Every year, on April 30, a ceremony commemorating those tragic events takes place in Dortmund. They also visit Zamość and Belzec, where the deportees were murdered in 1942.