Transport from Katowice, Katowice, Slask, Poland to Nisko, Nisko, Lwow, Poland on 27/10/1939

The second transport from Katowice to Nisko (the sixth out of seven Nisko transports altogether) left from Katowice in occupied Poland on October 27. It was ordered by Eichmann and organized by the local branch of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Prag, Zweigstelle Mährisch-Ostrau), headed by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Günther. Eichmann briefed his staff in Ostrava for the first time on October 9. He sent one of his deputees, SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf Günther – a younger brother of Hans Günther – to Katowice in order to implement the deportation order. Although Katowice had been annexed to the Reich and became the capital of the newly created Upper Silesian Province, the initial expulsion of the local Jews was not executed by the Kattowitz Gestapo. According to a memo issued by the head Office in Prague dated October 6, the Gestapo chief in Berlin, SS-Oberführer Heinrich Müller ordered the Central Office in Ostrava to organize the deportation and the expulsion of the 70, 000 to 80,000 Jews who lived in the Katowice district at the time. The document mentions that this action was meant as a pilot for all mass deportations to follow and underlines the possibility of initiating the deportations from Katowice together with those from Ostrava and its periphery. The distance between both towns is approximately 100 km....