Transport from Kleczew, Konin, Lodz, Poland to Zagorow, Ghetto, Poland on 16/07/1940

In the summer of 1940, most of the Jewish communities in Konin Landkreis (county) were liquidated, including Konin town. The Jews were deported to the three village ghettos of the Landkreis – Zagórów, Grodziec and Rzgów. This was also the fate of most of the members of the Kleczew Jewish community, who were deported to the Zagórów ghetto on July 16, 1940. This deportation is documented in letters sent on July 29, 1940 by the Jewish Welfare Committee from Kleczew in Zagórów (jüdische Hilfskomitee von Lehmstädt in Hinterberg) to the office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint) in Warsaw and to Jakub Wolman, a resident of Kleczew who worked for the Joint in Warsaw. The letters reported that all 750 local Jews were deported, and that 600 of them were in great poverty. It is further written in these letters that the Committee verified having received the financial aid of 1,000 Reichsmark from the Joint, of which it only used 400, since the mayor of Kleczew had collected part of the money as tax two days before deportation.
The execution of the deportation took the Jews by surprise, despite the fact that the Germans had threatened again and again that it was imminent. Michel Prost, a local Jewish resident testified to this, adding that the Germans had informed the Judenrat of the deportation, which had passed on the message to the rest of the Jews and that the Jews had taken with them all they could. Another survivor, Zvi Malron, testified that it had been possible to take only a few dishes and a small amount of food. His younger brother of three years, Menachem Marceli Malron Malarek, mentioned in his testimony that the family had been living with the grandfather in Rutki, a village near Kleczew, and that a Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) took over his house and his possessions immediately after their deportation.
On the day of deportation, the Germans instructed the Poles to go with their carriages to Kleczew. According to Prost, at 5 a.m., hundreds of horse-drawn carriages arrived, and the Jews waited next to their homes until it was time to be loaded onto a carriage. Prost was deported with his parents and siblings, and he said that neither the Jews nor the Poles knew their destination. A German police vehicle led the carriage convoy. Before departure, the Germans ordered the Jews to hand over the keys to their homes....