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This project's mission is to list the names of the victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust to show that these victims are not just an anonymous mass
[http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/piaski.html]
Soon after the Soviets withdrew as part of the Molotov- Ribbentrop pact, and the Germans entered the town. Piaski was the first town in Poland where the Nazis established a ghetto in the spring of 1940, initially the ghetto was accessible to outsiders and its borders were delineated on a relatively small area in the eastern part of the town divided by the main thoroughfare – ul. Lubelska.
A small Jewish ghetto was located on the other side of ul. Lubelska – in the autumn of 1940 the ghetto was fenced off and closed. The only water well for the Jewish population was available in the other part of town. For this purpose, the gates of the two Jewish quarters were only open for two hours during the daytime.
Apart from the Polish inhabitants of Piaski, there were over 560 German Jews relocated from Szczecin and a larger group of Jews displaced from Krakow.
Area of the former Ghetto in Piaski (photo taken in 2004)
Jews from other countries were transported to Piaski in the spring of 1942, and the local ghetto became one of the transition points in the Lublin Region.
On 20 March 1942 a train left the Rhineland for the Piaski ghetto. At Piaski, as at Izbica, new deportees were held only until a further deportation train arrived – sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks.
The train of 20 March 1942 included several Jews from Worms, among them Herta Mansbacher, the fifty-seven year old teacher who had so courageously sought to prevent the burning down of the synagogue in Worms in November 1938.
Among those with whom she was deported were sixteen Jews who had been wounded and decorated in the First World War – three of these German army veterans were Julius Neumann, Manuel Katz and Hermann Mayer.
[http://chelm.freeyellow.com/piaski.html]
The Piaski Ghetto was surrounded by a two-meter wooden fence with fixed barbed wire on top of it. The ghetto was initially divided into two parts: one on the northern side of Lubelska Street, the other one on the southern side. The ghetto reached as far as the police station on one side and Ksieza and Strazacka streets on the other side, and from the building of the German military police to the parish church. The ghetto on the northern side was dissolved in 1942 and its residents were moved to the southern section of the ghetto. In February of 1940, 565 Jews from Szczecin were sent to the ghetto. In April of 1941, 4,200 Jews from Germany and the Czech Republic were forced into the ghetto. In the summer of 1941, 500 Czech Jews arrived at Piaski. On April 25, 1942, 1,000 Jews were brought from Majdan Tatarski. On Sept. 2 and Oct. 25 of 1942, there were transports of 1,000 Jews from Czechloslovakia. In December, 1942, 1,200 Jews from Krakow were forced into the ghetto. Additionally, some of the Jewish population of Lublin was transferred to the Piaski ghetto. Jews from Glusk, southern Germany, and Moravia were also sent to the Piaski ghetto. When the ghetto was permanently locked in 1941, those inside were forbidden to leave it. The number of Jews in the ghetto was the following (estimates only): March of 1941: 4,803 Jews, January of 1942: 4,918 Jews, and May of 1942: 6,166 Jews. The numbers reached around 10,000 Jews by November of 1943.