Transport from Piatek, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 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 the townlet of Piątek (German: Piontek), 1,275 Jews were registered at the beginning of WWII. By January 1, 1940, their numbers had fallen to 838; at the end of the year there were 862 Jews in the town. Before April 1940, in the course of establishing ghettos all over occupied Poland, the Germans erected a ghetto in Piątek—the first in Łęczyca County. Various Jews from Piątek who survived the Holocaust recalled after the war that between three and five deportations left the Piątek ghetto to forced labor camps between September 1940 and September 1941. Only very limited information is available about the last deportation from Piątek. According to Pinkas HaKehillot, the Jewish community of Piątek was dissolved in April 1942. Joel Landau (b. September 14, 1920), born in Piątek, was deported to a forced labor camp in Hohensalza (Inowrocław) in the summer of 1941. Landau stated in January 1948 that the deportation from Piątek took place on April 12, 1942, and that all Jewish men, women, and children were taken to Chełmno. Landau stated that Stuben, deputy of the gendarmerie in the city, and Würfel, a high-ranking policeman in the gendarmerie—both well-known for their cruelty towards Jews in the city—took an active role in the deportations in general and specifically in the April 1942 transport. Historian Evelyn Zegenhagen gives April 22, 1942 as the transport’s date, basing herself on a letter from the mayor (Amtskommissar) of Piątek to Friedrich Ribbe, Hans Biebow’s deputy from the Gettoverwaltung (German administration of Łódź [Litzmannstadt] ghetto). In the letter, dated July 9, 1942, the Amtskommissar notes the dissolution of the Jewish ghetto and gives April 22 as the last day of revenue. ...