Transport from Leczyca, Leczyca, Lodz, Poland to Poddebice, Ghetto, Poland in 1941

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. Following the occupation, the Germans mistreated the Jews, blackmailed them, and sent them to forced labor. In the course of establishing ghettos all over occupied Poland in the months before April 1940, the Germans erected the county’s first ghetto in Piątek (German: Piontek) and then in Poddębice (Poddembice; December 1940), in Grabów (February 1941), and in Ozorków and the city of Łęczyca (fall/winter 1941). What was likely the first deportation from the city of Łęczyca is mentioned in Dąbrowska and Wein’s Pinkas HaKehillot, as well as by survivor Abraham Ziegler; both sources date it to December 1940. Though apparently hundreds of Jews were deported, no sources have been found that can give us insight into the deportees’ fates. ...