Transport XXX from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 23/03/1942

The total cost of this transport for 810 passengers (797 Jews, plus thirteen Schupo police guards), was 2,387.55 reichsmarks. The invoice, after being approved by the Gestapo, was passed on to Hans Biebow, the chief of the Nazi administration of the Łódź ghetto. “Transport XXX” left in the morning of March 23, 1942. The Germans removed 797 Jews from the ghetto.

Two days before this transport, on March 21, the Ghetto Chronicle recorded that there were no more so-called criminals left for deportation (often those who were tried for the mere theft of food and heating supplies) and almost no more welfare recipients. The author therefore concluded that basically everybody had become a candidate for deportation and that families would "need to be torn apart." Usually, Jews to be deported were notified three days prior to the transport. However, Eva Libitzky mentioned that by spring time (beginning on March 21, 1942, a Saturday [Shabbat]), the ghetto police, desperate to meet their quotas of deportees, rounded up people who had not even received any prior notification. It is not known how many Jews were apprehended and deported in this way....