Pinkas hakehillot

“Sielec” - Encyclopedia of Jewish
Communities in Poland, Volume II
(Selets, Ukraine)
50°19' / 24°12'

Translation of “Sielec” chapter from
Pinkas Hakehillot Polin

Published in Jerusalem

Acknowledgments
Project Coordinator
Joseph Hirschfield

Our sincere appreciation to Yad Vashem
for permission to put this material on the JewishGen web site.

This is a translation from: Pinkas Hakehillot Polin:
Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume II, pages 527-528, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of
fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by the copyright holder.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.

(Page 532)

Sielec*
(Sokal region, Lvov district)

Translation by Judah Ari-Gur

In 1921 – 175 Jews. It may be assumed that the Jewish residents of Sielec – like the Jews of the adjacent Krystynopol [Chervonograd] – fled in September-October 1939, after the Nazi occupation, to the areas under Soviet rule through the nearby border. If indeed there were Jews who stayed there, it is possible that the Jewish existence was eliminated in the fall of 1942 and the Jews were expelled then to Sokal and from there to the extermination camp in Belzec, or were sent directly to this camp.

Near the village of Sielec (7 km), next to the railway station Sielec-Zavone, the Germans built in 1942 a labor camp to the Jews of the area. Most of the prisoners (men and women) were from nearby Mosty Velikiye [Velikiye Mosty]. The prisoners did loading work in the station. The conditions in the camp were very hard and there were daily executions. In February 1943 all the women (about 220) were murdered together with 20 men who were forced beforehand to dig a common grave for them. The camp was closed in May 10, 1943; a small group of the prisoners was transferred to the labor camp in Janowska, in Lviv, and the rest of the Jews were apparently executed.

*Sielec (Selets), is the Sielec in the Sokal Region. Sielec Bienków is in the Kamionka Region. Sokal and Kamionka are adjacent districts, but the two Sielecs, both on the Bug River, are about 15-20 miles apart. The destruction of the Jewish population of the two villages was total, but was accomplished by different means.

Sielec Bienków

[Not included in Pinkas Hakehillot Polin]

50°11' / 24°25'

by Joseph Hirschfield

In September 2006 Joseph Hirschfield and his brother Philip from America visited Sielec Bienków, the ancestral village of their grandmother Kayla Hirschfeld. Sielec Bienków, on the Bug river, is in the Kamionka Strumilowa District of the Lviv Region. They met with Paulina Bratash, then an 84-year old lifetime resident of the village now named Selets. Mrs. Bratash was an eyewitness to a calamitous event on August 15, 1942. It was St. Mary's Day and all Christians were in church celebrating the Assumption of St. Mary. Several German trucks pulled into the town. With the prearrangement of locals it was easy for the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators to identify the homes of the Jewish residents. There were 72 Jewish families in the village. The Jews were rounded up, loaded into the trucks, and transported to Kamionka Strumilowa (now Kamenka Bugskaya). There they were shot and then buried in a mass grave along with other Jews from the area.

Mass grave in the city of Kamenka Bugskaya (formerly Kamionka Strumilowa)
The massacre site for Jews from Sielec Bienków (Kamenka district)
and other Jews from the area as well as from Kamenka Bugskaya.

Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page

Yizkor Book Director, Lance Ackerfeld
Emerita Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field z”l
Contact person for this translation Joseph Hirschfield
This web page created by Max Heffler