Transport from Grodziec, Ghetto, Poland to Niesłusz-Rudzica, Murder Site, Poland on 02/10/1941

On September 23, 1941, the remaining 1,600 Jews of the Grodziec and Rzgow ghettos were misled to believe that they were being transported either to Bessarabia or the Black Sea area to work on farms. The first group had to assemble that same day at the communal fire station with their belongings. They had to pay four Reichsmarks for a medical examination. Their luggage was set aside and they were told that it would travel separately and they would pick it up upon arrival. The deportees were loaded into horse-drawn wagons, driven by local Poles, and taken to the old synagogue in Konin. The distance from both ghettos to Konin was about twenty-nine to thirty kilometers. They stayed there overnight. It is not known if all 1,600 Jews were taken at once or in stages to the synagogue. The next morning, on September 24, 1941, the first wave of these 1,600 Jews was forced into trucks and taken to the Niesłusz-Rudzica forest, about five to six kilometers from the synagogue (between the communities of Niesłusz and Rudzica, in the forest district of Długa Łąka) where they were murdered. This action was repeated on September 25, 26, and October 3, which suggests that approximately 400 Jews were deported on each of these days. However, precise numbers are not known. Lucjan Zalas, a forest ranger from the Długa Łąka forest district testified after the war to the Polish Commission to Investigate the Nazi Crimes in Poznań about the mass murder of approximately 1,500 Jews in that forest. He claimed that they were brought in some twenty trucks to the killing site in the Niesłusz-Rudzica forest and buried in three mass graves. He was first ordered by the Sonderkommando Lange to clear the whole area. He then saw several trucks and a van enter the forest. They arrived in the morning and did not leave until the evening. There was machine gun fire only during the first day, on September 24, 1941. The other days, the Jews were probably killed by gas....