Transport from Zgierz, Lodz, Lodz, Poland to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 12/01/1942

At the outbreak of World War II, some 4,800 Jews lived in Zgierz (Łódź, Litzmannstadt County), in the Wartheland (also Warthegau)—located 10 kilometers northwest of Łódź—comprising approximately 15 percent of the town’s population. The Wehrmacht marched into Zgierz on September 7, 1939. Within a few days, the German authorities had organized slave labor, plundered the Jewish inhabitants and their businesses,^[1] defiled their holy sites, tortured, and murdered Jewish men, women, and children.^[2]

In the days following the occupation, many Jews, particularly young men, fled town. Many escaped to the Soviet-occupied eastern region of Poland. Most of the Jewish inhabitants, however, were chased out of Zgierz in the context of the so-called Nahplan (short-term plan). Under threat of certain death, the Germans ordered that Zgierz become "free of Jews" ("judenfrei") by December 17, 1939. Jews fled to relatives in Łódź or other nearby places^[3] or were deported to Głowno (in the General Government) and its surroundings on December 27.^[4]

A few Jews remained in Zgierz with their families and worked for the German authorities.^[5] In the report of Rabbi Szymon Huberband, who was a member of the Warsaw ghetto's underground archive headed by historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, they are called "Jewish informants,"^[6] but it is more likely that those Jews were useful to the Germans due to their professions; the group was made up primarily of craftsmen. According to historian Cezary Jabłoński, eighty-one of the remaining Jews lived outside the town, in the Chełmy outskirts, in a villa called "Roma."^[7] On October 4, 1940, Emanuel Ringelblum noted in his diary that some Jews were living outside Zgierz, and that the peasants were not allowed to sell them more than one kilogram of potatoes.^[8] It is likely that the Jews were not permitted to reside in the town at this time.^[9]...