Transport 6, Train Da 1 from Wien, Vienna, Austria to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 15/10/1941

Transport number 6 left on October 15th, 1941, from the Aspangbahnhof in Vienna. It was labeled Da 1 and arrived on October 16th at 4 PM (instead of at 11 AM as planned) at the Radegast train station in Lodz. A police officer and fifteen armed uniformed policemen (Schutzpolizei) were responsible for watching over the deportees during the trainride. The Jews were transported on a third-class passenger train. According to available records, the transport numbered 1,000 people (433 of those older than 61 years), of whom 101 were “not counted among the Jewish faith.” In other words, they were the wives/husbands and children of mixed marriages. The average age of the deportees was 55. A medical report dated October 18th and signed by the head of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in the Lodz ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski, reported that 79 elderly, sick and handicapped people who were unfit for work, had arrived on the transport from Vienna. Criminal Commissar Fuchs reported to the local security police commander (Inspektor der Sipo und des SD) in Posen that the transport included 740 people unskilled workers and 42 with professional qualifications. Immediately after the transport arrived in Lodz, the policemen confiscated all money and documents from the Jewish deportees and handed both over to the Gestapo. The Jews were then led to the ghetto. Many of the Jews from Vienna were murdered between May 4th and May 15th, 1942, in the Chelmno extermination camp....