Transport from Kowale Panskie, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 15/07/1942

The first deportation from the Kowale Pańskie ghetto to Chełmno took place on December 7–14, 1941. Within this period approximately 1,000 Jews were transported to the Chełmno extermination camp and murdered there. Following the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, and in the course of the systematic implementation of the “Final Solution,” the murder process in the Wartheland was accelerated. The authorities began the coordinated liquidation of the ghettos, sending the majority of the inhabitants to Chełmno. The Jews who were categorized as “arbeitsfähig” ("fit for work") were sent to forced-labor camps or to the Łódź ghetto. According to an account given on May 23, 1945, by Jakub Waldman (b. February 28, 1916), who lived in the Kowale Pańskie ghetto, a truck with a special SS unit arrived in the ghetto on July 15, 1942. According to a member of Jewish self-administration, Szmuel [Shmuel] Glube's (b. October 13, 1899), testimony, the Germans ordered Hersz [Hirsch] Zimnawoda, the head of the ghetto Judenrat, to present 25 strong men to be taken away. They threatened to take the members of the Jewish Police (Ordnungsdienst) if no one else turned up....