Expulsion of the Jews of Suwałki

Suwałki, the administrative center of northeastern Poland near the Lithuanian border, was home to an ancient, numerous, and learned Jewish community that had given the region several of its houses of study. Annexed by the Reich as early as the autumn of the first year of the war and incorporated into East Prussia, the city was among the first that the occupier undertook to empty: its Jewish inhabitants were rounded up, stripped of their belongings, and expelled by convoys to the Generalgouvernement, particularly toward the Lublin and Biała Podlaska regions. Many perished along the way; the survivors were overtaken by the deportations.