Transport from Lutomiersk, Ghetto, Poland to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 23/07/1942

The village of Lutomiersk, located some 19 kilometers west of Łódź, is situated in Łask County. With the march of the Wehrmacht into Lutomiersk on September 7, 1939, the 750 Jewish inhabitants of the town faced violence and murder.^[1] From the beginning of the German occupation, the Jews were subjected to slave labor, and the new authorities set up a Jewish Council (Judenrat). In August 1940 the local Jews were forced into an open ghetto.^[2] In December 1940, the Jewish community of Lutomiersk turned to the American Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint), asking for help for the now some 720 Jews, including thirty-five refugees, living at that time under catastrophic conditions.^[3]

From the summer of 1941 onwards, the ghetto borders could be traversed only with special permits.^[4] At the same time, smaller transports for slave labor left Lutomiersk.^[5]

On July 23, 1942, the Lutomiersk ghetto was liquidated. The date is given in a letter of complaint made by the Lutomiersk Gendarmerie in the name of non-Jewish locals to the German administration of the Łódź ghetto (Litzmannstadt), concerning an incident in which chickens were taken by Germans carrying out the ghetto’s liquidation. From this document we also learn that eight trucks carried the last belongings of the deported Jews to the Łódź ghetto.^[6] The complaint was rejected by Friedrich Ribbe, deputy of Hans Biebow, head of the German ghetto administration, on August 28; he declared that everything in the ghetto belonged to the German administration after its dissolution.^[7] On May 1, 1942, Wartheland Reichsstatthalter (Reich governor) Arthur Greiser had given the order to deliver the assets of the Jews deported from the ghettos in Łask County to the German administration of the Łódź ghetto.^[8]...