Transport from Kowale Panskie, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 07/12/1941

Chełmno (Kulmhof), some 70 kilometers west of Łódź, was chosen as the site of the first permanent mass-murder camp. It became operational on December 8, 1941, under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Herbert Lange and 15 members of the German Sipo (Sicherheitspolizei, Security Police). It was then that the members of the Jewish community of Koło, some 35 km from Kowale Pańskie, were murdered in Chełmno. Almost a month after the ghetto was established, on November 4, 1941, Hersz [Hirsch] Zimnawoda, the head of the Judenrat of the Kowale Pańskie ghetto, received an order from the German authorities to compile a list of all the Jews living in the ghetto area, indicating all those unable to work, i.e., people above the age of 65 and children below the age of 12. Mordechai Strykowski, the commandant of the Jewish police, compiled the list, but it was agreed that all the members of the community in the ghetto had the right to see the list. On the night of December 7, 1941, at 10 p.m., members of the SS and SA units surrounded the ghetto. The Germans went from door to door, rounded up Jewish families and sent them to the square of Czachulec-Bielawki. The next morning, December 8, at 6 a.m., the Jews were taken to a nearby field and separated into columns of men and women....