The area formed part of the Cherven Cities, a territory which was included within the emerging Polish state in the 10th century by its first historic ruler Mieszko I. It was invaded and annexed from Poland by Kievan Rus' in 981, and afterwards it changed possession several times between Poland and Rus', and even fell to the Mongol Empire in the mid-13th century. The origins of the town go back to the early Middle Ages, when a defensive gord existed on the Huczwa river island. It was first mentioned in 1254, as a hunting settlement located among forests.
In 1366, the area, along with Hrubieszów, then called Rubieszów, was eventually recaptured by King Casimir III the Great, and reintegrated with the Kingdom of Poland. Sometime in the late 14th century, a wooden castle was built here, as a residence of a local governor. Probably in 1400 Rubieszów received a town charter from Polish king Władysław II Jagiełło, who visited it in 1411, 1413 and 1430. A castle and church were later added. King Casimir IV Jagiellon ordered the construction of a route from Lublin to Lwów passing through Rubieszów. The town was destroyed several times by Crimean Tatars, who raided this area in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and by the rebellious Cossacks.
During the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the German army entered the town on 15 September 1939. Ten days later the Germans withdrew and the Soviet army occupied the town, but after a fortnight returned it to the Germans, in accordance with a new Soviet-German agreement. During the German occupation, the region witnessed the Zamość Uprising. Many inhabitants, including almost all of the 7,000 Jewish residents, were murdered in the Holocaust. In 1944, the German occupation ended, and the town was restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s.
Between 1975 and 1998, the town was administratively part of the Zamość Voivodeship.
Jewish community
The Jewish population numbered 709 in 1765, 3,276 in 1856, 5,352 (out of 10,636) in 1897, in 1921, there were 5679, and probably around 7500 in 1939.
During World War II, the German army immediately organized a series of "aktions" after it invaded the town on 15 September 1939. Over 2,000 Jews, having experienced the Nazi German terror, left with the withdrawing Soviet army, which shortly occupied the town after 25 September 1939. On 2 December 1939, 1,000 Jews from Hrubieszów and 1,100 from Chełm were led on a death march to the Bug River. Hundreds were murdered along the way, survivors were forced to try to swim across the Bug to the USSR, but the Soviets did not permit them to enter. The survivors returned to Hrubieszów. In August 1940, German police arrested about 800 Jews and deported 600 to a forced labor camp where about half died. Sometime between the summer of 1940 and June 1942, an occupation ghetto was formed. Both local Jews and those forced to move to Hrubieszów were confined to a fixed area. By April 1942, there were more than 5800 Jews in the ghetto.
Memorial to Holocaust victims
In June 1942, around 3,000 Jews from the ghetto were rounded up, some were killed in the town, and most were sent to the Sobibor extermination camp where they were all killed. The second deportation from Hrubieszów took place on 28 October 1942, when 2,500 Jews were deported to Sobibor and killed. Around 400 who resisted were executed at the Jewish cemetery and the last 160 Jews were sent to a forced labor camp in Budzyń.[6][7] About 140 of Hrubieszów 's Jews are thought to have survived. They were mostly those who had fled to Soviet controlled territory at the beginning of the war.
Jewish resistance
In the summer of 1941, Julek (Joel/Jakób) Brandt, a leader of the Zionist youth movement Betar from Chorzów who was a relative of the chairman of the Hrubieszów Judenrat (Jewish Council) Samuel Brandt, arranged for several hundred members of the Betar youth movement in the Warsaw Ghetto to work on local farms and estates, including one in Dłużniów and Werbkowice. Before the war, the estate in Dłużniów had belonged to Maks Glazermann, a Jewish engineer from Lwów who was left to run the property. Among those sent to Dłużniów was a young woman from Warsaw named Hanka Tauber. Her account of what went on there was recorded in the ghetto diary of Abraham Lewin.
Most of the Betar youth were killed in the spring of 1942 and in subsequent months together with the local Jewish population. A small number, however, managed to return to the ghetto and later took part in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Julek Brandt escaped from a transport heading for the Sobibor extermination camp. He was denounced by locals who tuned him over to the Gestapo in Hrubieszów. There he was put to work by Gestapo Obersturmbannführer Ebner, who named him chief of a small work camp on Jatkowa Street. At the end of 1942 or the beginning of 1943, Brandt was executed by Ebner.[8]
Transport
National road 74 runs through the town, continuing to the road border crossing with Ukraine at Zosin-Ustyluh located about 20 km to the east. In 2015 the road was rerouted to a newly built bypass avoiding the town centre. A wide gauge Hrubieszów–Sławków Południowy LHS railway runs through the town. A normal gauge railway runs parallel to it, which carries two pairs of PKP Intercity trains, first through southern Poland to Jelenia Góra and second through northern-central Poland to Piła. Lublin Airport is the closest international airport, located about 120 km away by road.
^"Polska w Liczbach". Data from Central Statistical Office (Poland). Retrieved 29 December 2016.
^Beider, Alexander (2012). "Eastern Yiddish Toponyms of German Origin"(PDF). Yiddish Studies Today. ISBN 978-3-943460-09-4, ISSN 2194-8879 (düsseldorf university press, Düsseldorf 2012). Retrieved 26 December 2023.
^Wyzina, Władysław (1928). Zarys historji wojennej 5-go Pułku Strzelców Podhalańskich (in Polish). Warszawa. pp. 7–8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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