Transport from Izbica Kujawska, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 14/01/1942

After several hundred male and female Jews from Izbica Ghetto had been deported to labor camps over the summer of 1941 and a few days after two deportations mainly for labor purposes to the Chełmno annihilation camp, on January 6 and 9, 1942, all the remaining Jews of Izbica (Mühlental) were deported to Chełmno. Between 1,000 and 1,300 Jewish men, women, and children from Izbica were deported by truck some 40 kilometers south to Chełmno. There are contradicting sources about the exact date of the transport. In her testimony given to Yad Vashem in 1961, Sarah (Erdberg) Menche, a native of Izbica recalled that the Jews had to pay a "Kopfsteuer" (poll tax), and that the Jewish council (Judenrat) advised the ghetto inhabitants to escape. On January 15, 1942, according to Sarah Menche, German soldiers murdered the Judenrat members in a nearby forest, among them the chairman Eliyahu Izbicki. From 5 o'clock in the morning, covered trucks entered the ghetto and all the inhabitants were rounded up in a local church. Sarah Menche managed to escape with her three-week-old daughter, mother, and other family members. The statements of a group of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) from Modzerowo (Pappeln), in the course of a trial at the district court Bonn (Landgericht Bonn) between 1962 and 1965, give us further insight into the deportation Aktion: The handful of Volksdeutsche from Modzerowo arrived at Izbica at around midnight.Together with SS, German police, and other Volksdeutsche from Izbica and neighboring places they violently rounded up the Jews. Among the men involved were police officer Eduard Schmalz, a Volksdeutscher, and police lieutenant Johanni. The townlet was surrounded by Volksdeutsche, armed with karabiners. The deportees had only a short time to pack a few items and to leave their homes. Young women were beaten and dragged from their beds. The deportees, among them at least one pregnant woman, as well as children, were pushed into the cold, through snow and ice. All the Jews were taken to a Catholic church at the market square, named Adolf-Hitler-Square (in some sources located on Poznańska street), which functioned as an assembly site and which increasingly became packed with deportees. At dawn, the first group of Jews was driven to Chełmno. The arrival of the Jews from Izbica at the death camp was recorded by Szlamek (Szlama Ber Winer, pseudonym: Jakub Grojnowski), who was deported from Izbica to Chełmno on January 6, 1942. Following his escape from Chełmno to the Warsaw Ghetto, his account was recorded by Hersz Wasser from "Oneg Shabbat" underground archive. Wednesday, January 14, 1942: "At ten, the first van with the victims from Izbica arrived. By noon we managed to do three fully-loaded vans. […] After dinner another five full vans of bodies were buried. A young woman with an infant at her breast was thrown out of one of the vans. The child was killed while suckling milk from his mother's breast. That day we worked until seven in the evening by the light of searchlights." Thursday, January 15, 1942: "The first transport arrived at ten. Those were Jews from Izbica. By lunchtime we had completed four tightly filled vans. […] During dinner I heard sad news: my dear parents and brother were already lying in the grave. At one in the afternoon, we went back to work. I was trying to get closer to the dead to look at my family for the last time. I was hit by the 'warm-hearted' German with a pipe and 'the Whip' shot at me. He missed. […] I was alone in this world. Of my whole family, which consisted of 60 people, I was the only one still alive. […] In the evening we were driven back to the cell. The people from Izbica were in great despair. We realized that we would not see anybody from our family ever again. […] After the evening prayers, those from Izbica recited the Kaddish." After the deportation and subsequent annihilation of the Jewish community of Izbica, no Jew alive remained in Izbica.