Wave of Deportation from Warsaw, Ghetto, Poland to Krychów, Camp, Poland on 22/03/1941

Between August 16 and December 3, 1940, fifteen transports, with a total of 4,118 forced laborers, left Warsaw for the forced labor camps of the Wasserwirtschaftsinspektion (water works inspection) in the Lublin District. Many of them ended up in Krychów,^[1] the largest of these forced labor camps, and one among those "with the harshest conditions."^[2] Since all the water work camps (Wasserwirtschaftslager in German), except for Krychów, had been closed down during the winter break, a new wave of transports began in the spring of 1941. In a memo dated April 21, 1941, the Jewish Social Self-Help (Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe, JSS) recorded that the Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat had been ordered to supply a total of 35,000 men aged 18-40 to all forced labor camps that year.^[3] Only a fraction of these workers were deployed to the water work camps in the Lublin District:  According to historian Tatiana Berenstein, nineteen transports, carrying a total of about 2,200 Jews, left the former Polish capital in the first half of 1941.^[4] These were relatively small transports, some with fewer than 100 deportees. Seven transports headed directly for Krychów. The first transport to Krychów left Warsaw on March 22, 1941. It carried fourteen deportees^[5], all of whom were apparently carpenters, who had to erect new wooden structures at the camp.^[6] The next transport left on June 4, with 120 Jews. More transports followed on June 6, 8, 11, and 16, but the numbers of deportees they carried cannot be ascertained.^[7] The two final transports departed on June 19 with 120 Jews and on June 21 with 100 Jews.^[8]

The operation of sending slave laborers to the water work camps in the Lublin District was supervised by the Warsaw Arbeitsamt (Labor Office), headed by Dr. Friedrich Ziegler, while the quotas of deportees were provided by the Judenrat (Jewish Council) — specifically, by its "Department for the Supply of Labor Camps," — at the behest of the Labor Office.^[9]

In 1940, at the onset of transports to the water work camps, a considerable percentage of Jews volunteered for this kind of work.^[10] However, the stream of volunteers dried up when these workers either did not give signs of life after their departure,^[11] or reported back about the horrible living and working conditions.^[12] The following fragment from a report submitted to the Ringelblum Archive in May 1941 reflects the general mood among the candidates who had gathered at one of the collection points on one occasion. Suddenly, they spotted a cart carrying exhausted, injured, and tortured returning workers: "When they saw the condition in which [their predecessors] returned, they rebelled and shouted: 'Kill us, but we won't go there!' And they started jumping out of the windows."^[13] Hence, most of the Jews sent to the camps in 1941 were forcibly seized. They were snatched from the streets, from shops, food lines, synagogues, and even from their homes. The suddenness of being whisked away by patrol trucks, or marched away on foot, was terrifying to Warsaw’s Jews. As one witness would recall: “Fear of the labor camps, the danger of being seized in the street for forced labor or worse, hung like a nightmare over the ghetto.”^[14] The salary for forced labor was set at 1.50 to 2.50 Złotys per day,^[15] "which did not cover even the most basic needs of the workers and their families."^[16]...