Transport from Jarocin, Jarocin, Poznan, Poland to Lodz, Lodz, Lodz, Poland on 10/1939

The county of Jarocin in Poland was annexed to the German Reich on October 26, 1939, and renamed Jarotschin; it belonged to Poznan Regierungsbezirk (Posen administrative district), part of the Reichsgau Posen (which was renamed Wartheland/Warthegau on January 29, 1940). One of the county’s two small Jewish communities, Jarocin had a Jewish population of about fifty out of a total of approximately 9,500 inhabitants. Similarly, at the start of World War II, only a few of the 10,000 residents of the town of Pleszew (Pleschen) were Jews. Little is known about the Jewish community of Jarocin and its fate during the Holocaust. A few weeks after the occupation the Germans expelled the family of Fela Klapholz (nee Tuch, b. February 4, 1926) from their home, which was taken over by an ethnic German (Volksdeutsche), leaving the Klapholz family to move in with another Jewish family. The Germans also took hostages in order to force the Jews to obey them. According to Pinkas Hakehillot, on October 22, 1939, all the Jews of Jarocin were deported to the area of the General Government (Generalgouvernement, the zone of Nazi-occupied central Poland not formally annexed to the Reich). However, no other sources mention a deportation from Jarocin to the General Government, and it cannot be ruled out that the destination of the transport mentioned here was the city of Łódź (renamed Litzmannstadt by the Germans in April 1940). The Łódź ghetto had not yet been created, and the city was often used as a transit site for deportations to the General Government, so earlier research perhaps assumed that Jews who were transported already in 1939 to Lodz were subsequently deported to the area of the General Government. Our research found that between October and December 1939 all of Jarocin’s remaining Jews were forced to make their way to Łódź. Fela Klapholz testified that one morning, with no prior warning, the Germans ordered the town’s Jews to take whatever they wished and to assemble in the marketplace. Fela remembers that there were forty-five Jews, only a few of them children. The Germans supplied them with two wagons and two horses, and ordered them to proceed to Łódź. Fela, who was thirteen at the time, relates that they were unguarded and that the Jews perhaps obeyed out of fear. David Tuch (b. December 6, 1924), Fela’s half-brother, was apparently held as a hostage in Jarocin when Fela was forced to leave. He recalled that he was deported to Łódź on November 6, 1939. The precise date of the main deportation (of the forty-five Jews) remains unclear. What is clear is that after the deportation no Jews were left in Jarocin and their property was confiscated. The Jewish community of Łódź looked after the arrivals from Jarocin among other deportees and refugees. According to Fela Klapholz they had to sleep on the floor. According to Pages of Testimonies show that at least ten of the Jarocin deportees were incarcerated in the Łódź ghetto, which was created on April 30, 1940; five of them were later deported to the Chełmno (Kulmhof) death camp and murdered, and five died in the ghetto itself. David Tuch was deported from the Łódź ghetto to a forced labor camp adjacent to Poznań (Posen) and afterward to Auschwitz, while Fela Klapholz was placed on a transport to Auschwitz in August 1944. Both survived – the only two known survivors of Jarocin’s Jews who were deported to Łódź in the fall of 1939.