Wave of Deportation from Poddebice, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 10/04/1942

By the end of September, 1939, the Germans had occupied Łęczyca County, annexing it to the German Reich under the name Landkreis Lentschütz on November 20. The county’s total population numbered some 126,000 people, of whom between 9,631 and 14,300 were Jews—numbers which varied with the refugees’ movement. In Poddębice (German: Poddembice), 1,400 Jews were registered at the beginning of the war—comprising between one third and one half of the townlet’s population. By January 1, 1940, their numbers had risen to 1,515, and, by the end of that year, when a ghetto was established, 1,503 Jews were registered. By the spring of 1941, there were at least 2,000 Jews in the ghetto, including people from Łęczyca city and nearby villages. During 1940–1941, some Jews were deported to forced labor in the Ozorków ghetto or via the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto to forced labor camps near Poznań (German: Posen). In his postwar testimony, Hershel Abram Menche (b. 1919) from Poddębice recalled that two Jewish escapees from the Chełmno death camp warned the local Jews about the Nazis’ plans. The news spurred him to leave the townlet at any price. He was among the ninety young male Jews deported to the Konin labor camp between March 12 and 17, 1942. While at the camp, he received a letter from his father, who was still in the Poddębice ghetto, stating that this would be probably his last letter, as all of the Jews were being taken away. On March 17, 1942, in accordance with the imminent dissolution of the ghettos in the Wartheland, the Nazis executed Jews in Łęczyca County ghettos—among them five Jews in Poddębice. ...