Transport from Zagorow, Ghetto, Poland to Kazimierz Biskupi, Murder Site on 21/09/1941

When the Germans occupied Zagórów (Hinterberg) on Sepember 6, 1939, the small community counted 630 Jews. Some of them were immediately sent for forced labor. The ghetto was established in the spring of 1940. A year later, it housed about 2,000 Jews, among them 500 locals. The deportees originated from Kleczew, Konin, Słupca, Ślesin and Golina. Late in the summer of 1941, about 450 men were sent to forced labor in the salt mines at Inowrocław (Hohensalza) and to build new railways in its surroundings. On September 19 or 20, 1941, SS-Obergruppenführer and Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) Arthur Greiser got permission from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to dissolve the ghettos by murdering its Jews. He started with the ghettos in Landkreis Konin and its population of about 7,000 Jews, since he urgently needed housing for thousands of homeless Poles who had been expelled from their properties to make room for the incoming ethnic Germans. Greiser charged a special SS unit named Sonderkommando Lange with the murder. During the summer of 1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange from the Gestapo in Posen, experimented with several new killing methods, among them mobile gas vans....