Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately 24 km south-east of Świdnik and 33 km south-east of the regional capital Lublin, and the river Wieprz flows by it.

History

Before World War I Trawniki was in the Lublin Governorate of the Russian Empire. The Russian government planned to use its train station to transport Russian troops to fight Austria-Hungary. During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Poland, Trawniki was the location of the Trawniki concentration camp. This camp provided slave labourers for nearby industrial plants of the SS Ostindustrie. They worked in appalling conditions with little food, and many died of disease, malnutrition and ill treatment. From September 1941 until July 1944, the camp was also used for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs, who were known as "Hiwi" (German letterword for 'Hilfswillige', lit. "those willing to help"), for service with Auxiliary police in occupied Poland. In addition to serving as guards at concentration and death camps, the Trawniki men (German: Trawnikimänner) took part in Operation Reinhard, the Nazi extermination of Polish Jews. They conducted executions at extermination camps and in Jewish ghettos, including at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw (three times, see Stroop Report), Częstochowa, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, Kraków, Białystok (twice), Majdanek as well as Auschwitz, and Trawniki itself.