Transport from Klodawa, Kolo, Lodz, Poland to Gross Kruscha, Camp, Poland on 18/10/1940

Paula Kempinski, née Zysling (born March 10, 1924), a survivor from Kłodawa, stated in her interview conducted on December 11, 1995, that on the second day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (Tabernacles) on October 18, 1940, before dawn, at about 3 a.m., approximately 75 young women aged 15 and above were brutally removed from their homes in the Kłodawa ghetto. They were chosen from a list of the town’s Jewish inhabitants. The German gendarmerie gathered them in the synagogue, where the women spent the rest of the night. In the morning, they were driven by truck to the train. From there they traveled in cattle cars some 80 kilometers to Mogilno, near Inowrocław. At the train station in Mogilno the group was divided and 13 girls from Kłodawa were transferred on to a truck and driven to a nearby farm in Wielka Krusza. This had been a large Polish-owned area with some 300 hectares of land, which was confiscated by the Germans and began functioning as a labor camp for Jewish girls in October 1940, supervised by the German management, Gutsverwaltung Gross-Kruscha.
Two men, a German and the farm's Polish foreman, took the women in a truck from the train station to the camp, a journey of some thirty kilometers. On reaching the camp, the girls were told that the other women from the Kłodawa transport had been sent to "Kleinkruscha" (Kaisertal, Krusza Podlotowa). However, there are no records of such a camp and no testimonies of any survivors.
The 13 girls from Kłodawa joined 12 other Jewish girls in the Gross Kruscha camp. All these women were provided with very basic living conditions and forced to work in the fields. Those who were unable to work were beaten. According to a survivor from the camp, Paula Kempinska, née Zysling, there were also Polish women working at the site, but under better conditions....