Transport from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Chelmno, Extermination Camp, Poland on 27/05/1944

On May 22, 1944, an announcement appeared in the Łódź ghetto, requesting that volunteers register at the Employment Department for work outside the ghetto. The German authorities demanded sixty men. The destination of the transport—the extermination camp in Chełmno (Kulmhof)—was not known in the ghetto, but there were rumors that it would be somewhere nearby. Some men volunteered and registered for the transport. They were free to go home, having signed a declaration in which they committed to leave the ghetto when summoned for transport. Over the following days, the Ghetto Chronicle reported that, due to hunger, volunteers continued arriving to register for the upcoming transport: “Often fathers leave their families because they simply cannot go on. In the ghetto, it is no longer the case that the head of the family is its provider, because each member of the family must work, each has an equal food ration, and so the old terms have lost their importance.”

On May 26, the volunteers received a summons to arrive at the Central Prison. They were held there overnight. Still, the quota was not filled. It appears that some men were also caught in the street. On the night of May 26, the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Police) performed night searches in the homes of the men who had been summoned but had not turned up for previous deportations. Many were caught that way; Jakub Poznański, one of the ghetto diarists, wrote: “That night [between May 26 and 27], a few dozen men were dragged out of their beds and subsequently sent to the Central Prison in case the authorities demand more people for deportation.” According to the Chronicle, seventy men were brought in that night. ...