Wave of Deportation from Bojanowo, Rawicz, Poznan, Poland to Leszno, Murder Site on 16/06/1941

Bojanowo (Schmückert) is a townlet in Rawicz County in western Poland. Under German rule, the townlet belonged to Landkreis Rawitsch (sometimes called Schmückert Land). In 1938, it had 2,994 citizens, of which 86.9 percent were Poles and 12.5 percent were ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche). The former independent Jewish community (Synagogengemeinde Bojanowo) declined in the interwar period due to emigration and, in 1933, officially became part of the Jewish community in Leszno (Lissa). In September 1939, only six families remained registered as Jewish residents, with a total of seventeen members. The townlet also accommodated a home for elderly Jews from the vicinity, established in 1900 by the Jewish philanthropist Moritz Rohr through his foundation Jüdische Altersversorgunsanstalt Moritz Rohrsche Stiftung. Around thirty elderly Jews resided in the institution at the onset of the war.

Furthermore, Bojanowo operated the Provincial Department for the Poor, mostly known as Dom Pracy Przymusowej, a social welfare institution established in 1893 under Prussian rule. On May 25, 1929, at the decree of the president of the Republic of Poland, its purpose was altered to combating panhandling and vagrancy. The facility accommodated Polish, German, and Jewish citizens arrested as beggars, vagrants, and paupers, some diagnosed with mental disorders. The inmates were referred to forced labor by court order from three to six months or, in certain cases up to two years. The National Archives in Leszno reported that 46 women and 183 men were in the facility in 1937. The number of inmates in 1939 and beyond, and its breakdown by ethnicity, is not precisely known. ...