Transport, Train 1071 from Kalisz, Kalisz, Lodz, Poland to Kielce, Kielce, Kielce, Poland on 17/02/1940

On January 20, 1940, Wilhelm Koppe, HSSPF (Higher SS- and Police-leader, Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer) Warthegau, wrote to the Nazi officials involved in the deportations informing them about the upcoming transports. The RSHA had decided, in accordance with the governor of the General Government, Hans Frank, and the Reich's Ministry of Transport (Reichsverkehrsministerium), to commence the deportations from Kalisz (Kalish) town and other places in the Wartheland earlier than planned, in order to make space for Baltic Germans. Among the recipients of Koppe's letter were the Regierungsgspräsident (district president) of Kalisz, the mayor of Kalisz town, Walter Grabowski, the Landrat (county commissioner) of Kalisz, Herrmann Marggraf, the SD, and the Kalisz branch of the Central Resettlement Office (Umwandererzentralstelle, UWZ). This deportation wave, named the interim plan (Zwischenplan), took place between February 10 and March 15, 1940, with at least forty transports dispatched from the Wartheland. Altogether, 40,128 Jews and Poles were uprooted from their homes in the course of this plan. By then, the Jewish community of Kalisz had already suffered heavy losses. In October 1939, a German census put the Jewish population of the town at around 18,000. After the first large deportation wave, in December 1939 (Nahplan I), only 613 Jews were left in Kalisz. In the beginning of 1940, most of those Jews who were left were concentrated in the Kalisz ghetto, and had to perform slave labor for the Germans; others were patients of the Jewish hospital, headed by Dr. Deborah Gross-Shinage....