Transport from Sanniki, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 17/04/1942

After the establishment of the German civil administration on October 26, 1939, the village Sanniki was incorporated into the Third Reich as part of Landkreis (county) Gasten, Regierungsbezirk Hohensalza, Reichsgau Wartheland. A German report of the participation of Einsatzgruppe 6 in deportations of Poles and Jews from Warthegau, states that in 1939, the number of Jews in Sanniki was 290.^[1] In December 1939, Sanniki had 5,382 inhabitants, of which 311 were Jewish. Before the establishment of the ghetto in Sanniki, Jews from the neighboring villages of Słubice and Osmolin were resettled to Sanniki, raising the Jewish population to 351. ^[2]

The ghetto, established in September 1940, was under the authority of the local representative of the civilian administration, Amtskommissar Kahle. Many Jews in Sanniki were forced to leave their apartments and move into the small ghetto, comprised of just a few streets.^[3]

In November 1941, the son of Yisochor Kohn from Gostynin came to Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aronson of Sanniki.^[4] He reported that in Chełmno, the Germans had “set up a huge slaughter-house which they disguised as a bathhouse. Since the eve of Yom Kippur 1941, Jewish souls were being murdered in large numbers in a brutal manner. The ghettos received an order a few weeks in advance to pay two or four Marks as a head tax. In this manner this money would certainly cover the expenses of extermination operations.”^[5]...