Transport from Bojanowo, Rawicz, Poznan, Poland to Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Ghetto, Poland on 12/12/1939

Bojanowo (Schmückert) is a townlet in Rawicz County in western Poland; under German rule, it belonged to the Landkreis Rawitsch (a county, sometimes also called Schmückert Land). In 1938, it had 2,994 citizens. Of these, 86.9 percent were Poles and 12.5 percent ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche). The former independent Jewish community (Synagogengemeinde Bojanowo) declined in the interwar period due to migration and, in 1933, officially became part of the Jewish community in Leszno (Lissa). In September 1939, only six families, with a total of seventeen members, remained registered as Jewish residents.

The townlet also accommodated a home for elderly Jews from the vicinity, established in 1900 by Jewish philanthropist Moritz Rohr through his foundation, Jüdische Altersversorgungsanstalt Moritz Rohrsche Stiftung. The institution boasted forty rooms. It housed mostly single men over fifty-five years of age, a few women, and married couples, who were provided with free accommodation, meals, and social and medical care. While under German rule, it accommodated Jews from the province of Posen. In the thirties it became a shelter for Jews not only from the vicinity but also from far-flung regions of the Polish Republic, even from Kraków and Galicia. In 1938, it had 265 residents. At the onset of the war, between twenty-five and several dozen elderly Jews still lived in the facility....