Transport IX from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 12/07/1944

On July 12, 1944, the Ghetto Chronicle^[1]reported that the ninth transport—carrying 700 Jews^[2]—had left the ghetto that morning. It was yet another transport from the Łódź ghetto to the Chełmno death camp (Kulmhof).

One of the ghetto chroniclers, Jakub Hiller,^[3] wrote about the events leading up to the transport in his diary. On Tuesday, July 11, 1944, Hiller described the conversations taking place in the ghetto’s streets: the talk among the Jews was about the meeting that had taken place with Chaim Rumkowski and Aron Jakubowicz, on one hand, and Otto Bradfisch and his Nazi colleagues, on the other. People were running to and fro, trying to find out what had been decided. To Jakub Hiller, it seemed that Rumkowski had made a deal with Bradfisch that 12,000 Jews would be taken for work outside the ghetto. The Bekanntmachungen (announcements) for transport, meanwhile, were posted all over the ghetto. At the end of the day, Hiller wrote that “our nerves are as tight as strings on a fiddle.”^[4]

Later on that night, the night between July 11 and 12, Hiller described the terrifying scenes he witnessed, with Jews being kidnapped on the streets and taken away:...