Transport VII from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 22/01/1942

The seventh transport from Łódź to Chełmno — with 704 Jews — left the ghetto on Thursday, January 22, 1942. The ghetto mailmen delivered summonses to the deportees requiring them to report a few days earlier to one of the three assembly sites: 7 Szklana Street (Trödlergasse) near the main prison, Marysin area and the school building at 25 Młynarska Street (Mühlgasse). Deportees whose homes were far from the assembly sites had to cross one of the two bridges above Zgierska Street (Hohensteiner Strasse) — a passage that was physically very hard for a starving population in the snow and the cold of January, when temperatures dropped to -18 °C. When the deportees entered these assembly sites, their bread and food rations were confiscated after which they received their usual food ration in the ghetto from the Judenrat (about 900 calories a day), necessary clothes and wooden clogs. Each deportee was given half a loaf of bread and sausage as provisions for the journey.
The deportation lists from January 1942 include the names of the deportees as well as their addresses in the ghetto, their date of birth, their marital status and their professions. It is also apparent from the lists that sometimes large groups of Jews were taken from a few houses in certain streets. This, for example, we learn from the deportation list of the transport that left on January 22: 46 Jews were taken from 11 houses on Zawisy Czarnego Street (Inselstrasse), and 55 Jews were taken from 13 houses on Młynarska Street; very often, these were neighboring houses.
Dawid and Nachman Gryc were brothers sent directly from the main ghetto prison at 12 Czarnieckiego Street (Schneidergasse). On the contrary, the rest of the deportees arrived at one of the assembly points from their homes. This information appears in a report written by Chaim Rumkowski on March 10, 1942 (about a month and a half after the transport had left) to a policeman of the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei, the criminal police), with the rank of Kriminalkommissar, who had deported those internees — most probably Günther Fuchs. This report gives information about 53 Jewish prisoners from the main prison who were included on the lists of deportees in the transports that left the ghetto in January 1942....