Transport from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 01/09/1942

Between January and mid May 1942, the Germans had removed 54,990 Jews from the Łódź ghetto, murdering them in the Chełmno extermination camp. In late August 1942, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office – RSHA) ordered the resumption of the deportations. All ghetto residents under age ten and over sixty-five, the sick, and the unemployed were slated to be deported. The ghetto would become a forced labor camp. SS Hauptsturmführer Günther Fuchs (head of Referat IV B 4, the Department of "Jewish Affairs" in Łódź), who led the Gestapo’s activities in the ghetto, reported during his 1966 trial in Hannover that he was informed of the RSHA’s order approximately three weeks before the mass deportations resumed. As a prelude to the new wave of deportations, the Germans decided to empty all but two of the hospitals and clinics in the ghetto and to convert them into factories. At the height of its development the ghetto had seven hospitals, four clinics, and two emergency stations. Their total capacity comprised 2,600 beds....