Transport from Lututow, Ghetto, Poland to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 21/08/1942

On September 2, 1939, the townlet of Lututów (Landstett), in Wieluń County, was occupied by German troops and became part of the Warthegau (the region of Western Poland annexed to the Third Reich). According to Pinkas Hakehillot, shortly after the occupation, an antisemitic propaganda movie was filmed by a German crew.^[1] The occupation forces ruled with utmost cruelty.^[2] Former Jewish residents of Lututów recall SS member Artur Walter Dittberner as especially brutal. He appropriated all tanneries from their Jewish owners, forcing the owners to work for him instead, among them Moshe Berkovicz (b. 1913, also Berkowitz), who was later deported to Wieluń. Dittberner was also known for organizing groups of German and Volksdeutsche (local Germans) men from Wieluń who would beat up the Jews on the streets of Lututów.^[3]

In March 1940, the local Jews were herded into an open ghetto erected by the Germans.^[4] On July 23, according to the Amtskommissar (city clerk) of Lututów, Ludwig Deppenwiese, half of Lututów’s inhabitants were Jewish.^[5] On December 25, the Jewish community of Lututów numbered 1,375 local Jews, 247 Jewish refugees from other places, and twenty so-called Rückwanderer (returning emigrants). The food supply was sparse.^[6] Over the course of 1941 and 1942, male and female Jews were frequently kidnapped for transports to forced labor sites outside Lututów,^[7] as well as in the Poznań area; the forced labor’s deadly nature soon became apparent to the community. In 1942, some 1,200 Jews were known to be living in the Lututów ghetto.^[8]

On August 11 or 18, 1942, according to the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen Ludwigsburg (Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes), a unit of the Wieluń Gestapo entered Lututów, and organized the demolition of its Jewish community. Before dawn, the German forces raided the ghetto, forcing everyone out of their homes and into the streets. The men, women, and children were then taken to the local Catholic church. During the raid, anyone caught hiding or trying to resist was shot by German gendarmes, Gestapo, and SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service).^[9] Moshe Berkovitz reported to the Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone shortly after the war that some of the elderly and weak were taken to the Judenrat building and shot dead.^[10] Younger Jews buried them....