Transport from Zloczew, Sieradz, Lodz, Poland to Lublin, Lublin, Lublin, Poland on 11/1939

Approximately 30,000 Jews lived in Sieradz County at the outbreak of the war; in Złoczew there were 1,714 Jews, some 32 percent of the town’s population. The German army entered Złoczew on September 3, 1939, burning many homes and killing 200 people, among them some 150 Jews. Friedrich Rippich was nominated county commissioner, and held the position until the end of 1941. In early November 1939, the SS and police commanders in the cities and towns of the Warthegau area of received a decree signed by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler on October 30, 1939, ordering the commencement of deportations of Jews and Poles. According to Himmler's document, all of the Jews from the area belonging and annexed to Nazi Germany were to be deported by February 1940 to a prospective Jewish "reserve" in the area of Lublin. On November 8, during a conference organized in Kraków, Obergruppenführer Krüger, the chief of the SS in the General Government (Generalgouvernement, the zone of Nazi-occupied central Poland not formally annexed to the Reich) and Gruppenführer Wilhelm Koppe, the chief of the SS in the Warthegau, agreed that 300,000 people would be deported from the Warthegau to the General Government for the purpose of the "Germanisation" of the areas annexed to Germany. The property of the deportees was to be confiscated by ground units of the Main Trustee Office for the East (Haupttreuhandstelle Ost). In a secret decree from November 12, Koppe ordered the deportation of all Jews in the counties of the Warthegau. The first deportations were scheduled for mid-November. In addition, on November 13, Koppe issued a prohibition on free movement or change of address for the Jewish population in the Warthegau....