Transport from Wieruszow, Ghetto, Poland to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 22/08/1942

Wieruszów, situated in southern Poland on the banks of the Prosna River, was occupied by the Wehrmacht on September 2, 1939. In the wake of Hitler’s decree of October 8, 1939, Nazi Germany annexed the western provinces of occupied Poland and established the civil administration unit – Reichsgau Posen – on October 26, 1939. The name was changed on January 29, 1940, in Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau). Concurrently Wieruszów, as part of the newly formed Wieluń county (Landkreis Wielun), was annexed to the Reich and renamed Wieruschau. It was one of the largest Jewish communities in the county, which had a Jewish population of about 11,000 before the war. Proximate to the German invasion, some 2,400 Jews resided in Wieruszów, comprising roughly 40 percent of the local population. In early November 1939, the Germans arrested members of the intelligentsia, both Polish and Jewish, and officials of the Jewish community leadership. They were incarcerated in the Radogoszcz prison, near Łódź; their fate is unknown. In the same month, eighty-two men of religious appearance—including Rabbi Moshe Eliezer Kliger—were herded onto trucks and photographed with a sign: “These are the Jews who shot our soldiers.” They were sent to Germany to do forced labor, in Nuremberg. At the end of 1939 or the beginning of 1940, the Germans appointed a Judenrat (Jewish Council) under the leadership of Yosl Jedwab. Its main functions were to compile lists of the Jewish population and to provide workers for forced labor. By January 1940, Wieruszów’s Jewish population had been reduced to about 1,740 . ...