In the spring of 1941 in preparation for the attack on the Soviet lines in eastern Poland the German military storage facilities were set up in Izbica, and kept under heavy guard. The first mass deportation of ghetto inmates to the Bełżec extermination camp took place in mid-March 1942 conducted by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 with the aid of Ukrainian Trawnikis. During Operation Reinhard the ghetto served as a transfer point to the extermination camps in Bełżec and Sobibór for foreign Jews deported from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and western Poland ("Reichsgau Wartheland"). In rounding them up in Izbica, typically the guards murdered dozens or hundreds in the town. Following the departures, Jews were hunted down and murdered in hiding places or in nearby fields. More than 20,000 Jews passed through the Izbica ghetto. Of all Jews of Izbica (over 90% of its prewar population), only 14 survived the Holocaust.