Transport from Skulsk, Konin, Lodz, Poland to Grodziec, Konin, Lodz, Poland on 13/07/1940

In mid-July 1940, a transport from Skulsk (Rollensee), a small town in the Konin district with a Jewish population of approximately 210 prior to the German occupation, departed for Grodziec (Grossdorf), approximately fifty-three kilometers away. Hanah Gonshorovits (in Polish: Hanna Gonsiorowicz), who was on this transport, stated in her post-war testimony that the deportees left Skulsk early in the morning on July 13, and arrived in Grodziec at 7 p.m. the same day. Another Holocaust survivor, Lewi Leo Monczka, who was born in Konin, witnessed the liquidation of the Jews from Skulsk and other towns in the Konin district. He testified that the deportation took place on July 15, when the Jews were transported by horse-drawn wagons through the villages of Grodziec, Zagórów (Hinterberg) and others. According to Gonshorovits, horse-drawn wagons were prepared in Skulsk in advance, on July 12, but locals did not know who was to be deported, Poles or Jews. At 2 a.m. on July 13/15, Hanah Gonshorovits heard screaming, but no one was allowed to go outside. Gendarmes and two Volksdeutches entered her house. Hanah and her family were ordered to get ready, to pack twenty kilos of luggage per person and to leave the place within ten minutes. The Jews were assembled in front of a Jewish community building and they stayed there for the whole night. In the morning, thirty horse-drawn wagons arrived and the deportees were loaded onto them. Guarded by Gendarmes, the transport went through Ślesin (Schlüsselsee) and Konin, from where the Jews had been deported a night earlier....