Transport from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 15/08/1944

Of about 206,000 Jews who had inhabited the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto, only 68,516 remained on August 1, 1944—40,023 women and 28,493 men, including 4,635 children.^[1] By the end of August, the ghetto had been liquidated and almost the entire remaining population had been send to their death in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Despite extensive research, it is impossible to cite full and accurate transport dates for this phase of the massive deportations from Łódź, which may indeed have spilled over into September. Nazi Germany’s looming defeat and the concomitant chaos during the final months of the ghetto’s existence impacted powerfully on the records kept by both the Germans and the Jews.^[2]

On August 15, 1944, Chaim Rumkowski, the chairman of the Łódź gheto’s Judenrat, issued an announcement urging the population to report voluntarily for transports in order to facilitate their journey together with their family and belongings.^[3] As Jakub Poznański noted in his diary a few days later, Rumkowski “encourag[ed] people to proceed voluntarily to the Central Prison on Czarnieckiego Street or on Krawiecka Street, in order to be included in the transport and to avoid unpleasantness. Some say that a large number of people volunteered but that the Germans went on seizing people anyway, others claim that few people turned up, which is why they continue with the roundups.”^[4]...