Wave of Deportation from Kolo, Ghetto, Poland to Posen "Eichwald", Camp, Poland on 06/1941

In June 1941, three transports of Jewish men left Koło to two forced labor camps near Poznań: Steineck (Krzyżowniki) and Eichwald (Dębiec). The first transport of 210 men was dispatched to Steineck on June 18; the second transport of approximately 250 men departed on June 20 to Eichwald; and the third transport left a few days later with the rest of the deportees—a few dozens— who should have been deported with the first transport. According to Abraham Harap, a key witness from Koło, who was deported in the second transport, the Jewish men were assembled on June 16, 1941 in the yard of the employment office (Arbeitsamt), where they were registered and then allowed to return to their homes. On June 18, Fritz Neumann, the head of the civil engineering office (Leiter des Tiefbauamtes) in Poznań who was responsible for some of the Poznań forced labor camps and a key figure involved in the deportations of Jews from the Warthland to these camps, arrived in town accompanied by some Schupo operatives (Schutzpolizei —uniformed regular police force) and a number of trucks. They demanded that the Jewish community supply them with 300 men fit for labor. The community assembled 210 poor, single young men who had no relatives; they were deported to Steineck the following day. According to another source, this was part of the transport of a total of 500 men that left on June 18, after collecting the Jews in Koło for transport to Steineck. However, this might have been part of the even larger transport of 1,040 Jews from Dobra, Turek, and Koło that Jacobs Benjamin from Dobra describes in a postwar testimony, although he reports that the transport took place in May 1941....