Wave of Deportation from Kolo, Ghetto, Poland to Steineck, Camp, Poland on 06/1941

Koło, a town of a total population of 12,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the war, of whom nearly half were Jewish. After the occupation of the city on September 18, 1939 the Germans renamed it Wartbrücken (later on Warthbrücken). They deported more than 1,000 Jews in December 1939 to Izbica Lubelska located in the Generalgouvernement and in October 1940, 150 Jewish families to the nearby village ghettos Bugaj (Bugitten) and Nowiny Brdowskie. In the beginning of December 1940, a ghetto was established in Koło. After undergoing a selection, a group of men was sent to slave labor camps in Poznań that same month. In June 1941, three transports of Jewish men left Koło to two forced labor camps near Poznań: Steineck (Krzyżowniki) and Eichwald (Dębiec). The first transport of 210 men was dispatched to Steineck on June 18; the second transport of approximately 250 men departed on June 20 to Eichwald; and the third transport left a few days later with the rest of the deportees—a few dozens— who should have been deported with the first transport. According to Abraham Harap, a key witness from Koło, who was deported in the second transport, the Jewish men were assembled on June 16, 1941 in the yard of the employment office (Arbeitsamt), where they were registered and then allowed to return to their homes....