Transport from Kolo, Kolo, Lodz, Poland to Bugaj, Ghetto, Poland on 02/10/1940

On October 1, 1940, several Jewish men in Koło were forced by the German authorities into the local synagogue. At around nine o'clock the following evening, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), some 150 families, around 560 Jews, were assembled. Some hours later, at 1 a.m., they were deported to the newly established ghetto. This was the second largest deportation from Koło town (following one mass deportation to the General Government in December 1939).
According to a letter by an eyewitness named Neumann, found at the underground archive "Oneg Shabbat" in the Warsaw Ghetto, headed by historian Emanuel Ringelblum, the deportees were guarded by Nazi units like the NSKK (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, National Socialist Motor Corps), headed in Koło by Emil Zimmermann. The Judenrat of Koło was forced to prepare the deportation list.
Hadassa Becker, born in 1925, and her family were among the deportees. In a post-war interview she remembered how, all of a sudden, early in the morning, the Germans gathered them outside their houses. Older people and infants were deported on horse drawn wagons, while the other men and women were marched by foot to the ghetto. When the caravan of elderly and young ones arrived at the forest of Bugaj and Nowiny Brdowskie, the deportees were not allowed to down from the wagons, but had to wait in the rain, as the Germans were busy evicting local Poles from their homes. As the Jews entered the ghetto from one side, the Polish people were still being taken out at the other side of the grounds. The emptied farm houses were then packed with groups of Jewish deportees....