Transport V from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 03/07/1944

Early in the morning of July 3, 1944, the fifth transport—carrying 700 Jews—left the Radogoszcz station in Łódź, bound for the Chełmno death camp.^[1]

Oskar Rosenfeld, one of the ghetto chroniclers, reported on that day that the ghetto was even more agitated than it had been during the previous days.^[2] At two o’clock in the afternoon, Avraham Yitzhak Laski described the chaos and uncertainty that reigned in the ghetto streets in his diary: “The situation is becoming more uncertain. New lists are being prepared in all the workshops.”^[3]

Laski lived with his younger sister, Rywka,^[4] who had just turned thirteen years old, on 38 Buchbinder St. Their father, Dawid, passed away from illness and hunger in the ghetto in 1943. On the afternoon of July 3, Laski described his helpless situation and wrote these heartbreaking lines: “Oh, our situation is sad. I am so sorry for my little sister, who has gone through so much.… She lacks everything—a mother’s kind heart, and parts of wardrobe, including dress and tights, not to mention malnutrition.… Instead of shoes—some wooden invention; instead of tights—some rags sewn together; instead of food—hunger; instead of a mother’s love—the hard school of shop lines and the art of ghetto cooking. God, how can You, how can You watch all this, as if You were a neutral spectator?”^[5]...