Lublin, Poland: Death Incidents Register
November 1941 and January 1942

This database includes information from 681 death incident reports from Lublin in November 1941 and January 1942.

Background

During World War II, the German occupiers of Lublin required the municipality to prepare a supplementary “Death Incident Report”, in addition to issuing official death certificates for the Lublin deaths during some period of the war.  There were three groups of these death incidents reports which survive, and are maintained by the Polish State Archives banch in Lublin.  The first and third files contain a portion of Jewish deaths in the city (ghetto) during the months of November 1941 and January 1942, respectively.  The second file apparently covers 61 non-Jewish deaths in the city for the month of December, 1941.

Contemporary Lublin historians believe that the ultimate purpose of the death incident report was to provide information to the German occupiers about private property, in order to plan the confiscation of property of dead citizens.  It is not known why the report includes only selections from the official death register and not the entire month’s registration.  It is also not clear why the first and third file includes only Jews, but the second file includes only non-Jewish Poles.  However, the death incident reports provide additional information about the life and family makeup of these Shoah victims at the time of their deaths which are sure to aid the family researcher.

Database

This database includes records from the death incidents registers between November 1941 and January 1942.  There are 252 deaths included in the November report, and another 429 deaths included in the January report.  Because it may have taken a few days to register the deaths, there are incidents in these reports from October and December 1941, in addition to the deaths that occurred the same month as the registration date.  These registers appears to be only a portion of all the deaths recorded in the city during that time and the certificate numbers (akt) appear to accurately reflect the municipal death registration numbers issued during that time period.

The fields for this database are as follows:

• Name (Surname + Given Name)
• Maiden Name (for widows and unmarried women)
• Number (sequential entry number)
• Death Record Number — corresponds to official death register's Akt (record) number.
• Last Permanent Address
• Place of Death — Address
• Date of Death
• Age
• Civil Status (See Note 1 below)
• Profession / Comments

Note 1: Civil Status.  The table below gives the Polish-to-English translations of the "civil status" information from the original source document.

Acknowledgments

The City of Lublin Death Incidents Reports can be found in the Lublin Judenrat files which are housed at the Lublin branch of the Polish State Archives (AP).  The file is labeled “Sygnatura 289 and 291”.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has a copy of all this material in Washington, D.C.  It is catalogued as RG-15.075M.  The index at USHMM lists a third file labeled “Sygnatura 290”, which was never supplied to USHMM by Lublin.  We are told it contains 61 non-Jewish deaths occurring during the month of December 1941.  The actual death registration referred to by number in this report is maintained by the City of Lublin at their Civil Registry Office (USC) in Lublin.

Edward Mitelsbach, a JewishGen volunteer, performed the data entry portion for this project.  Robinn Magid proofread the data.  Thank you to Tadeusz Przystojecki of TeatrNN in Lublin, Poland for supplying the English translations of the column headings, and for providing historical context.  Special thanks to Peter Landé for obtaining photos of the files through the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Nolan Altman
Coordinator - Holocaust Database
May 2010

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database and the JewishGen Poland Database.