Mielec, Poland

On March 9,1942, the Jewish community of Mielec, Poland, ceased to exist. The Nazis dismantled the entire town in a single day, executing the elderly, deporting the able-bodied for slave labor, and transporting the rest to the Lublin district, where they were later murdered in Sobibór and Belzec. The Germans had taken over a Polish aircraft factory on the outskirts of Mielec, where they manufactured Heinkel 111 bomber planes (pictured above) for the Nazi war machine. Following the March 9, 1942, deportation, the factory complex became part of the Mielec Nazi slave labor camp, later a concentration camp.

Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel is founder and executive director of the Remember the Women Institute, New York City, and a senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Women and Gender, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. For this book, her sixth, she carried out research in Mielec, the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as spending a semester as a research fellow at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad vashem, Jerusalem. Dr. Saidel received her PhD in political science from the Graduate School and University Center, City University of New York. She currently divides her time among Jerusalem, New York City, and Sao Paulo.