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In 1941, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Bauleitung der Luftwaffe began to build airfields at Mokre and Labunie, near Zamosc. Jewish work camps were also established in these villages. A group of Jews from the ghetto worked in these camps, which survived the liquidation of the ghetto itself. The number of Jewish workers there was enlarged in 1942. Several dozens of the Czech Jews deported to Zamosc and Izbica were sent to the camp in Labunie, which was finally liquidated in 1943 when all of the workers were executed.
In early April 1941, the Jews were ordered to move to an impoverished quarter in the New Town, the poorest district in Zamosc. In the main, before the war only Orthodox and destitute Jews had lived there. Many houses in what was to become the ghetto had been destroyed in the early days of the war, and those that remained were extremely dilapidated. The conditions of life were very primitive.
In 1941 when the Zamosc Jews had to move into New Town, many houses there were empty. It was from this part of the town that most of the Jews had escaped to the Soviet Union. The deadline for moving was 1 May 1941. The Judenrat conducted a census immediately after the establishment of the ghetto and discovered that it contained 7,000 Jews. The ghetto was not "closed", but exit from it by Jews was only permitted at certain times. Poles, on the other hand, were allowed access to the ghetto, which helped to ameliorate the usual drastic shortages of food and other essentials common to all ghettos. Until June 1941 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union, there was even a functioning post office in the ghetto.
At the end of March and in early April 1942, rumours began to circulate in the ghetto concerning mass deportations from ghettos in the Lublin area to the extermination camp at Belzec.
[http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/zamosc.html]
In the second half of March 1942, Jews from towns adjacent to Zamość were taken to Belzec. On March 24, 2,200 Jews were evacuated from Izbice and a few days later some 3,400 Jews from Piask. In the wake of these news, rumors spread in Zamość about the local ghetto being “evacuated east”. All the Zamość Jews awaited the Aktcia with great anxiety.
On Saturday April 11, 1942 at 2 P.M., German units surrounded the whole New Town. The checkpoints surrounding the Zamość ghetto were manned by German police [including the Reiter Polizei Abteilung on horseback], military police, Szupo units [under the command of Schworhoff, the commander of the Zamość company], and members of the local S.D. The checkpoints were set up on all roads leading out of the ghetto, no one was permitted to leave Nova Osada; on the other hand all the Jews who happened to be outside the ghetto at the time were allowed in. All of this provided clear evidence that the evacuation was soon to begin. A little later the whole command in charge of the evacuation came to the office of the Judenrat, together with almost the whole team of the local Gestapo, including the commander responsible for the Aktzia, Hauptsturmfuhrer Gotthard Schubert and his deputy Bohlman, and the official in charge of the minorities in the district, Oskar Reichwein.
[http://zamosc-jews.com/wb/pages/en/holocaust/extermination-and-resi...]
[http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/zamosc%20ghetto.html]
[http://pinkas.jewishmuseum.cz/cesty-bez-navratu/polsko/zamosc]
[https://collections.jewishmuseum.cz/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/ob...]
[https://collections.jewishmuseum.cz/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/ob...]