Wave of Deportation from Sompolno, Kolo, Lodz, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 03/02/1942

The first deportations of Jews from Sompolno, it appears, occurred in February 1940; after the war, Samuel Stopnik testified to the USC Shoah Foundation that he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp on February 20, 1940. The next known deportations took place in the summer of 1941. One hundred and fifty strong young Jewish men and fifty women between the ages of eighteen and forty were deported in several waves to three forced labor camps in different parts of the Wartheland. The subsequent deportation was comprised of thirty Jews, deported on December 8, 1941, the date of the Chełmno extermination camp’s establishment. Rumors from the surrounding cities, from which Jews had already been deported, reached Sompolno, and many Jews expected the deportation any day; Miriam Kominkowska-Greenstein of Sompolno noted, typically for most Jews at that time: “We always had a knapsack packed, knowing they would come in the middle of the night evacuating Jews.” On February 1, 1942, Sompolno was suddenly swarming with German police, who patrolled the streets making sure that no Jew left the city. The next day, February 2, was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shevat and a cold winter day, and it was then that the Germans began to arrest and gather the bulk of the Jewish citizens. At 8:00 P.M. electricity was cut. The gendarmes, SS, and Gestapo arrived by truck, surrounded all the streets where Jews lived, went from house to house and, where necessary, broke into dwellings. Some Jews who were not prepared to leave were given one hour to present themselves on the street; others were immediately dragged to the street and pushed on board the waiting trucks. The trucks that collected the Jews from their homes brought them to a huge, empty, unheated lumber storehouse next to the train station. Others were first led to the central market square before trucks moved those gathered to the same collection point. An anonymous eyewitness stated after the war: “Herded into one group on the market square, they were beaten with whips, rifle butts, heavy shoes…. The cries of women and children being shoved around gripped people’s hearts with pain. People could see this from their hiding place, because the night was clear…”...