The third deportation in May 1942 from the Łódź ghetto to the Chełmno (Kulmhof) death camp took place on May 6. This transport included 1,000 Western European Jews. The figure can be found in the documents from the ghetto's Jewish self-administration archive[1] and is also recorded in an invoice for the transport submitted by the Reichsbahn Verkehrsamt (Transportation Authority of the German national railway) to the Gestapo Litzmannstadt. The total cost for this transport was 3,059.20 reichsmarks, including the fare for thirteen guards from the Schupo (Schutzpolizei—uniformed regular police force) in the only second-class passenger wagon as far Koło—where other guards replaced them—and their return trip from Koło to Widzew.[2]
As with previous deportations, some individuals requested and received exemptions. For example, Karoline Hain (b. 18.11.1882), an unmarried woman from Cologne who arrived in the Łódź ghetto on October 20, 1941, received an exemption from this transport.[3] Hain worked as a cook in the ghetto and was registered as living at 69 Kelm St. According to Lodz Names. List of the Ghetto Inhabitants 1940–1944, Hain was later deported to Chełmno in September 1942.[4] Other names of those who were exempted from this transport can be found in the archival material of the Aussiedlungskommission (deportation commission).[5]
The Ordnungsdienst (Jewish ghetto police) recorded some of the suicides that occurred in the days before transport, among them M.S. (b. 1876), a widow originally from Bromberg. She poisoned herself in the morning of May 4, the date on which the deportees were ordered to assemble and died that afternoon in the ghetto's hospital No. IV. [6] A list of the registered deaths is preserved in Yad Vashem's archives.[7]...