Włodawa was over 70% Jewish before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland and the Holocaust. The city became part of the Nazi German Lublin District of the General Government following the invasion. Włodawa Ghetto was set up by the German administration in 1941. Jews from all neighbouring locations were sent there. The Ghetto was overcrowded and lacked food and medicine. Starvation and disease were common. Round ups for the Holocaust transports to the nearby Sobibór extermination camp took place in waves: 1,300 Jews in May 1942, 5,400 in October, 2,800 in November 1942, and 2,000 in April 1943, as well as the last 150 in May 1943. In June, all remaining Jewish children under the age of 10 were deported and gassed. During the ghetto liquidation action, at the end of October 1942 hundreds of Jews escaped to the surrounding forests. Włodawa Jews were mostly deported Sobibór, but some were executed locally at the German "Arbeitslager" workcamps such as the one at Adampol. Several Jews from Adampol and the Włodawa Ghetto were able to escape, and joined the Parczew partisans in the forests, fighting actively against the Nazis with Soviet assistance and weapons. The Jewish cemetery was demolished by the Germans who used the headstones as road building material, and turned the Synagogue into military storage.