Transport from Lodz, Ghetto, Poland to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 22/08/1944

“Overall, there are 30,000 Jews left in the ghetto. And now already two groups are leaving, every day 2,000 Jews [are deported]. If it continues like this, even eight days will be too many to empty the ghetto,” Menashe Wasercug wrote in his diary on August 23, 1944. This is the closest one gets to statistical information about the number of Łódź ghetto inhabitants on August 22, 1944. By this time, the Judenrat’s statistical department had ceased to record changes in the number of inhabitants in the ghetto or to tabulate the number of those deported. Consequently, no full and precise record exists about the transport that left the Łódź ghetto for the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex on August 22, 1944.

By August 22, the Jews remaining the Łódź ghetto were forced to leave their homes and register in their work groups, in designated buildings. Among them was Menashe Wasercug, who was registered in “Shop 46.” Others, for example the sewage and waste workers, were concentrated in 14, 16 and 18 Żydowska Street and in 3, 5, and 7 Brzezińska Street. Several more points of assembly were also created in the ghetto: the workers of the transportation department were assigned to one location, and other groups–the Jewish policemen, firemen, carriers and porters–were each ordered to move to joint dwellings. Temporary assembly points, “Sammellager,” where inmates waited to be transported, were also established. In addition, there were two camps for doctors, bakers, pharmacists and others, at 36 and 63 Łagiewnicka Street. Those who were registered and assigned to quarters in their workplace or in a temporary camp received food and were not included in the daily roundups. Still, these groups, too, were gradually deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz. ...