Transport from Wilczyn, Konin, Lodz, Poland to Zagorow, Ghetto, Poland on 07/1940

The exact date of the deportation from Wilczyn to Zagórów cannot be determined, but the transport was conducted between July 15 and 18, 1940, most likely on July 18. "We got notice from Zagórów (Konin County) that on July 18 all Jews from Kleczew, Golina and Wilczyn, in total 1,600 persons, were rounded up. They were sent, with just a few belongings, to Zagórów, where already 145 Jewish families were to carve out a miserable existence." With this cry for help, Jewish representatives from Poland approached the US Embassy in Berlin on July 28, 1940. A report compiled after the war by Leo-Lewi Monczka from Konin town, who escaped the Warsaw ghetto in April 1943, cites July 15, 1940, as the day on which the Jewish communities in Landkreis Konin were taken by horse-drawn carts to Zagórów and Grodziec, along with, among others, the inhabitants of Kleczew (Lehmstädt), Ślesin (Schlüsselsee), Golina, Rychwal (Reichwald), Wilczyn, Kramsk (Kramsried) and Słupca (Grenzhausen). Among the deportees from Wilczyn to Zagórów was eighteen-year-old Abraham W. Landau. He was taken from his hometown together with his parents and his three younger siblings. The Landaus left their blind and bedridden grandmother behind and never heard of her again. Abraham's cousin Reuven Landau and family were also among the deportees. Abraham Landau recalled in a post-war interview, how one morning the Germans suddenly announced by loudspeaker that all Jewish inhabitants of Wilczyn, without exception, had to leave the townlet within one hour. Abraham Landau remembered how his family was caught utterly by surprise, and how immense were the chaos, crying, anger and disorientation of his whole family, when they had to decide what personal belongings to take with them, as only hand luggage was allowed. According to Abraham Landau, the deportees were guarded by SS men and their dogs, as well as Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz (a paramilitary Nazi group of ethnic Germans subordinated to the local SS and police). Subsequently, the Landaus and other Jews had to lock up their homes, hand over their keys to the Gestapo and were led to the village square. Hundreds of horse-drawn wagons were already waiting. The Landau family climbed onto one of them and then waited for several hours in the cold, not knowing where the Nazis were going to take them. Each wagon was driven by its owner, a Polish farmer. Behind each wagon, Abraham Landau recalled further, SS guards were seated. ...