Nisko and Lublin Plan

Plan developed by the Germans at the beginning of World War II for the expulsion of Jews living in German-occupied areas to the Lublin region of Poland. Adolf Eichmann and Franz Stahlecker initiated the plan. They chose Nisko, near the eastern Galician border, as the site for a transit camp for the Jews, from which the Jews would be resettled in the Lublin district of the Generalgouvernement. The Lublin Reservation was slated to be "a Jewish state under German administration." Near the end of 1939, this plan was accepted among SS leaders.

The first transport of 901 Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia set off for Nisko on October 18 (see also Bohemia and Moravia, Protectorate of). When they arrived, the Jews were forced to set up barracks in a swampy field. Another 1,800 Jews from Katowice and Vienna arrived a few days later. However, despite Eichmann's long-term plans for the site, the transports were soon stopped, and the camp was shut down in April 1940.

Officially, the Nisko and Lublin Plan was cancelled due to "technical difficulties," which probably referred to the difficulties Heinrich Himmler had in finding jobs for those ethnic Germans he had resettled in Poland in place of the Jews. Additionally, Hitler lost interest in a Jewish reservation---and turned his attention to deadlier means of solving the "Jewish question."