Transport from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 09/08/1944

Of about 206,000 Jews living in the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) ghetto, only 68,516 remained on August 1, 1944—40,023 females and 28,493 males, including 4,635 children.^[1] By the end of August, the ghetto had been liquidated and almost the entire remaining population had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered.

Despite extensive research, it is impossible to cite full and accurate transport dates for this phase of massive deportations, which may indeed have spilled over into September. Nazi Germany’s approaching defeat and the concomitant chaos during the final months of the ghetto’s existence impacted powerfully on the records kept by both the Germans and the Jews.^[2] Even though the Judenrat’s statistical department kept records until August 21, the first deportations that month, which began more than two weeks earlier, were only listed retroactively, in the records for August 18-21. Deportations were listed for August 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13, comprising a total of 12,400 souls.^[3] However, our research indicates that the first two transports that month left the ghetto as early as August 4 and 5, and it is unclear whether the statistical department listed different dates by mistake or intentionally.^[4] On August 9 – according to a report of the department from August 20 – 1,700 people, 119 of them children, were deported to a destination unknown to the Jews.^[5]

On August 7, the head of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in the Łódź ghetto, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, was forced to publish an announcement on behalf of the chief of the Litzmannstadt Gestapo and the city’s mayor, Otto Bradfisch. The notice ordered the employees of the tailors’ workshops from 2 Młynarska (Mühlgasse) and 28 Nowomiejska (Neustadtstrasse) and their families to report by 12:00 noon on August 8 to the ghetto’s Central Prison (Czarnieckiego str./Schneidergasse). They were promised food and a place to sleep ahead of being taken from the ghetto the following day, August 9.^[6]...