Wave of Deportation, Train 1025 from Lodz, Lodz, Lodz, Poland to Starachowice, Wierzbnik, Kielce, Poland on 02/03/1940

In the so-called Nahplan I operation of December 1939, thousands of Jews were deported from the Wartheland (known also as Warthegau) to the General Government.^[1] Afterward, Higher SS- and Police-leader (HSSPF, Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer) Wilhelm Koppe, noted in his summary of the operation that the plan was to deport all the Jews in the Warthegau to the General Government (Generalgouvernement, the zone of Nazi-occupied central Poland not formally annexed to the Reich).^[2] On December 21, RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - Reich Security Main Office) director Reinhard Heydrich ordered his expert on Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, to devise a plan to that effect. By January 8, 1940, Eichmann had concluded that the plan could not be implemented by the end of April.^[3] However, since the Nazis wished to provide immediate housing and jobs for incoming Baltic Germans, an “intermediate plan” (Zwischenplan) was drawn up.^[4] 

On February 8, 1940, SS- Brigadeführer Johannes Schäfer, the German police chief of Łódz, publicly announced the creation of an isolated district for Jews in the Bałuty, Stare Miasto (Old Town), and Marysin neighborhoods, the most neglected areas of northern Łódz. All the Jews in the city were ordered to move by themselves into this area by February 29.^[5] However, events proceeded too lethargically for the Nazis, so to expedite matters they arrested Jews on the streets and expelled some of them from the city.^[6] On February 29, 1940, they conducted an actia (roundup), herding almost 3,000 Jews into a factory building on Łąkowa Street, in the course of which they were beaten and tortured, and in some cases killed. Those who were able, paid a ransom of 150 Reichsmarks to be released, but most of the Jews were held prisoner in the factory and transported to the General Government in the days that followed.^[7]

On the night between March 1 and 2, 1940, the Germans carried out two more roundups in which 500 Jewish and Polish families were seized.^[8] According to the historians Isaiah Trunk and Peter Klein, some of the evacuated Jews were deported to the General Government already on March 2. Klein notes that deportation train no. PJ-1025,^[9] to Starachowice (Radom District) departed from Łódz  that day, and two different sources of the UWZ (Umwandererzentralstelle - Central Resettlement Office) cite the exact departure and arrival times –  the train set out at 12:55 P.M. and reached its destination that evening at 8:40.^[10]...