Transport from Kozminek, Ghetto, Poland to Goluchow, Murder Site, Poland on 01/12/1941

Since November 26, 1941, the ghetto was surrounded by gendarmerie, Gestapo and a special SS unit (Rollkommando) commandeered by Göhler. Each day he ordered the residents to report within 15 minutes to the square next to the local synagogue for the alleged purpose of having their ration cards approved. They were allowed to bring one parcel of personal belongings. They were told that the ghetto was being turned into a labor camp. Therefore, anyone who was not yet employed, specifically the children and the elderly, would be "evacuated." The younger ones would go to a children's home and the elderly to a sanatorium. Göhler stopped providing pretexts after the first deportations. When the Jews were assembled at the square, Göhler read out loud the names of the victims. He was most of time drunk, and he humiliated and tormented the attendees. With the help of 15 SS men, he separated the elderly, the disabled, the sick and the weak, and children under 14 from the rest of the Jews who had escorted their relatives. There were babies among the victims. When parents resisted, the Germans tore the children from their arms, and if this did not produce the desired result, the resisters were shot. Concurrently, searches was undertaken for those who were in hiding and had not turned up at the square; anyone found was shot. The exact number of those murdered during the selection procedure is not known, but the court in Stuttgart sentenced Göhler for personally having killed at least ten victims. The group had to leave their belongings on the synagogue square and were locked up overnight inside the prayer house without provisions. The next morning, a large black vehicle, closed on each side, arrived. This van was provided by Sonderkommando Lange. Herbert Lange in his earlier Gestapo position as SS-Sturmbannführer in Posen had been tasked with the murder of the mentally ill in the Wartheland and, under Greiser’s order, experimented with the gas vans as a new form of mass killing from early 1940. Lange's operation in Koźminek was the last in the Warthegau euthanasia program before his unit was renamed SS Sonderkommando Kulmhof and charged with establishing Chełmno extermination camp. Chełmno started its operations on December 8, six days after the end of the deportation wave from Koźminek....