The German army entered the city on 15 September 1939, and immediately organized a series of pogroms. Ten days later the Germans withdrew and the Soviet army occupied the town, but after a fortnight returned it to the Germans, in accordance with a new Soviet-German agreement. Over 2,000 Jews, having experienced the Nazi terror, left with the withdrawing Soviet army. On 2 December 1939, 1,000 Jews from Hrubieszów and 1,100 from Chełm were led on a death march to the Bug River. Hundreds were murdered along the way, survivors were forced to try to swim across the Bug to the USSR, but the Soviets did not permit them to enter. The survivors returned to Hrubieszów. In August 1940, Germand and Polish police arrested about 800 Jews and deported 600 to a forced labor camp where about half died. Sometime between the summer of 1940 and June 1942, an Occupation ghetto was formed. Both local Jews and those forced to move to Hrubieszów were confined to a fixed area. By April 1942, there were more than 5800 Jews in the ghetto.