EXPULSIONS OF JEWS AND POLES FROM REICHSGAU WARTHELAND First Displacements, September 1939

In practice, the regulations concerning the solution of the “Jewish problem” in Inowrocław Regierungsbezirk and the Warthegau went into effect only when Wehrmacht forces arrived. Although the regulations were characterized by direct extermination actions, their scale was limited in comparison with the 1941–1942 standards. They were carried out in places where the number of Jewish inhabitants was quite small and their

goal was to terrorize and induce emigration. Until November 1939, the German authorities did not impede voluntary changes of residence in counties that had large Jewish concentrations. They even considered such migrations desirable, and provoked Jews and forced them to leave their hometowns, e.g., in Ciechocinek or Radziejów (about 50 kilometers from Kleczew). “Wild” displacements (unauthorized and unorganized expul-sions of Jews by low-ranking district officials with the intention of seizing their property) also took place.⁷⁷ Simultaneously, organized displacements were being prepared.

Evictions began in September 1939. Jews in Posen Regierungs-bezirk and, to some extent, in Inowrocław RegierungsRegierungs-bezirk (Żnin, Szubin, and Mogilno counties) were concentrated on September 7, 1939, in Buk, Nowy Tomyśl County. A month later, they were transported to the Młyniewo transit camp near Grodzisk Poznański and thence to Szymanów in Sochaczew County in the General Government. Announce-ments ordering Jews to leave town were made in Pakość in October 1939 and in Inowrocław on October 20 and November 14, 1939. On October 20, 1939, women and children were transported from the latter loca-tion to Gniezno. Another transport, on November 14, 1939, delivered several people to Gniezno and Kruszwica. In late November and early December 1939, sixty-five Jews from Gniezno, forty-seven of whom had been brought to Gniezno from Inowrocław, and twenty Jews from Klecko, near Gniezno, were transported to Piotrków Trybunalski. The transport reached this destination on December 13, 1939, after almost two weeks en route. Ten people from Czerniejewo (Gniezno County) were sent to Łódź on November 10, 1939. In December 1939, a group of Jews from Szubin reached Gorzków. In February 1940, Jews from Gniezno and Gniezno County found themselves in Pruszków, near Warsaw.⁷⁸

Displacements in Lublin

The counties in the western part of Inowrocław Regierungsbezirk (Gniezno, Inowrocław, Mogilno, Szubin, Wągrowiec, and Żnin) and Ostrów and Kępno counties in Kalisz Regierungsbezirk were “liberated”

of Jews by December 1939. Operations for this purpose continued in some parts of the Posen Regierungsbezirk counties and in the central

and eastern part of the Inowrocław Regierungsbezirk. To organize and carry out displacements in Nieszawa, Włocławek, Koło, Konin, Kutno, and Gostyń counties, more resources had to be engaged. Demography and socio-topography were decisive factors. Many towns had Jewish populations in the thousands (e.g., 13,000 in Włocławek, 6,800–6,900 in Kutno, 4,200 in Łęczyca, 9,400 in Zduńska Wola, 2,800 in Sieradz, and 4,500–4,600 in Koło).⁷⁹ Local authorities adjusted their policies to the central authorities’ changing regulations. Initially there was no exact plan regarding what to do with the Jewish population. In September 1939, the intention was to deport all Jews from Polish areas incorporated into the Third Reich and from the Altreich to territory in southeastern

Poland; afterwards, they were to be expelled across the demarcation line into the Soviet Union. In reality, this proved impossible. The next plan was to enclose all Jews in an enclave in the southeastern part of the General Government, between the Vistula and Bug rivers. The Lublin vicinity was chosen as a preliminary location. Ultimately, a decision was made to concentrate the Jews in an enclave or transit camp in Nisko, situated in the District of Lublin. Implementation of this scheme began in November 1939 but was suspended in February 1940. By then, many people had been forced to leave their homes and had been shunted from place to place, subjected to hunger, and sentenced to a slow death.

The authorities in Inowrocław Regierungsbezirk implemented the plan in November 1939. Jewish communities were ordered to force Jewish landlords to draw up lists of their Jewish tenants. Non-Jewish landlords who had Jewish tenants were instructed to do the same. After the data were collected, a list of eviction designees was produced. The first to go were the poor. Ahead of the eviction, Jews were assembled at gathering points—mainly workshops, warehouses, schools, churches, and syna-gogues. A procedure laid down on November 24, 1939, determined that each transport of Jews had to be loaded in alphabetical order twenty-four hours before departure.⁸⁰ Transports often set out at night. The methods used in the displacement resulted in many casualties, as people were beaten, packed into unheated carriages for hours or even days, and denied food and water.⁸¹

The first mass displacements, from Włocławek, Konin, and Koło counties, ensued in December 1939. Two transports from Włocławek, with 500–550 people in each, were sent to Ożarów (December 1, 1939).

In Konin, a group of 1,080–1,200 Jews was taken to the gathering points.

On the night of November 30 to December 1, they were trucked to the railway station. On December 3, they reached Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.

Jews from Golina were also taken there. Some of those displaced from Konin found themselves in Turobin and Gorzków. Jews from Słupca and Skulsk were also taken to Gorzków. On December 10, 1939, 1,139 Jews from Koło were transported to Izbica Lubelska. Some of the newcomers were sent on to nearby towns and villages: 175 to Zamość and sixty-two to Krasnystaw, Turobin, Komarów, and Hrubieszów. On December 15, 1939,

a transport from Włocławek and Włocławek County (Kowal and Lubień Kujawski) was directed to Zamość and Włoszczowa. Some people were sent to Wiskitki, Szczekociny, Tarnogród, Komarów, and Szczebrzeszyn.

Jews from Ciechocinek County, mainly from Aleksandrów Kujawski, were displaced in December 1939. They found themselves in Sokołów Podlaski, Sokołów Małopolski, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, and Zamość. More displacements took place in February 1940. A transport from Włocławek and nearby towns was sent to Tarnów. Other groups from Nieszawa, Włocławek, and Koło counties were sent to locations in Masovia and Lesser Poland, in the General Government (Radom, Warszawa, and, in individual cases, Kraków). For example, Jews from Kowal and Lubień (Włocławek County) were sent to Żyrardów, Łyszkowice, Skierniewice, and Błonie. Jews from Włocławek were transported to Warsaw, Pruszków, Siedlce, Skierniewice, Piszczac (near Biała Podlaska), Grójec, Góra Kalwaria, Kozienice, and Limanowa. Jews from Aleksandrów Kujawski and Ciechocinek (Nieszawa County) found themselves in: Łyszkowice, Siedlce, and Grójec. It is interesting to note in passing that Jews in Gostyń and Kutno Counties were not displaced, even though the Jewish commu-nities in the relevant towns were rather large.⁸² Jews from Kalisz County (Łódz Regierungsbezirk), mainly from Kalisz, Koźminek, and Stawiszyn, were displaced.⁸³ Jews relocated from the territories of Reichsgau Danzig, Western Prussia, reached towns in Inowrocław Regierungsbezirk, mainly in Włocławek, Ciechocinek, and Kutno counties. In November and December 1939, Jews from Lipno, Dobrzyń on the Wisła, Lubicz, Kikół, and Toruń were banished to Włocławek and Aleksandrów Kujawski.⁸⁴

On December 8, 1939, department heads at the office of the General Governor convened to discuss resettlement and Jewish policy. At the gathering, HSSPF SS Obergruppenführer Krüger, representing the German police in the General Government in Kraków, stated:

From December 1, several trains carrying Poles and Jews from the areas recently annexed to the Reich will reach the General Government daily. These transfers will pour in until the middle of December. In Berlin, work on a central resettle-ment plan continues; on its basis the heads of districts will be

able to work to the longer term. This plan will determine how many Poles and Jews will have to be resettled in 1940. From mid-December, transports of Germans of Volhynia will come;

they will be passing through the General Government area.⁸⁵

The January 4, 1940, Conference

On January 4, 1940, Eichmann called a conference in Berlin to discuss further population displacements from the eastern areas. The discussants mulled a problem: more transports of displaced persons were reaching the General Government than had been planned. The General Govern-ment, beset with its own economic problems, was unprepared to receive them. The issue, however, went beyond the impossibility of deploying the

displaced to different locations. Often lacking was elementary coordina-tion between those responsible for deporting people and those respon-sible for receiving them. Sometimes the evictees spent eight days in sealed wagons. People froze in unheated trains, starved to death, or became ill due to exhaustion and unclean surroundings. Therefore, to improve the RSHA’s performance in this matter, Eichmann decided to allocate Secu-rity and SD Inspectors—one assistant and one officer to each location—to carry out orders.

At first, the authorities allocated enough food for the transportees for two days. Given the organizational problems that prolonged travel and the food shortages in the General Government, however, the authorities later allowed, and still later even ordered, the displaced to take food with them. The destination, the General Government, was unable to provide the new arrivals with even minimal nourishment, especially in the first few days. In particular, local authorities in cities that received evacu-ation transports had no provisions for them. The General Government authorities threatened not to accept displaced people unless they were supplied with enough food for eight days and, subsequently, required that they have enough food for fourteen days; otherwise, they would send the transports back. These authorities repeatedly cited “the bad food situation in the General Government” and stated that it would not improve until the next harvest. Thus, the Reich would have to continue providing assis-tance. Reich Minister Seyss Inquart asked SS Gruppenführer Heydrich to support him on this. SS Brigadeführer Otto Wächter sought assurances regarding an adequate supply of food for evacuees arriving from areas where the food situation was generally better than it was in the General Government.⁸⁶

The First Short-Term Plan (Der erste Nahplan): Discussion in January 1940 In his report on January 26, 1940, the Higher SS and Police Commander in the Warthegau wrote about the resettlement of Poles and Jews from the Warthegau to the General Government, thus summing up the first short-term plan.⁸⁷ According to the report, on November 28, 1939, an order requiring transportation to the General Government had been obtained for the period starting December 16, 1939, for 80,000 Poles and Jews.

According to the author of the report,

The separation of quotas was based on studies of the population structure and the planned emigration of Germans from Baltic countries. In principle, at least one train of up to 1000 people was allocated for each rural county. For larger counties and cities or those that had a larger number of Jewish residents, a more appropriate assignment of trains was allocated.⁸⁸

Within two days of the onset of the first short-term plan, eleven trains were made available for eight counties. Given the rapidly progressing operation and the transport difficulties, communication with Landräte and Oberbürgermeisters in the Warthegau, Higher SS and Police Commander, and, eventually, the Security Police and SD Commander and heads of districts or SS and police commanders in the General Government was made only by telephone and telegraph.

Notably, the operation began only about six weeks after the end of mili-tary operations in Poland. Communication difficulties still prevailed and the Warthegau and the General Government were organized in diverse administrative units, further complicating matters. Thus, trans-ports from the Warthegau set out and reached their destinations without proper coordination or notice of arrival. Although all offices involved in the deportation were constantly kept informed by daily reports to the RSHA, in practice there was much chaos.

Before beginning the ethnic cleansing of the Warthegau, Special Staff SS officers carried out inspections in many places to observe the state of preparations for deportation under the first short-term plan (der erste Nahplan). Although the preparations did not suffice for the start of displacements in November 1939, in some localities the authorities began to evict Poles from their homes and send them to transit camps (Durch-gangslager) anyway.

The General Government principals convened again in Berlin on January 30, 1940, to discuss developments in the forced resettle-ment of the Polish and Jewish population from the Warthegau to the General Government. “The evacuations carried out up to now,” their report stated, “have consisted of approximately 87,000 Poles and Jews from the Warthegau in order to make room for the Baltic Germans, who are to be settled there. In addition, there has been a spontaneous,

so-called illegal, emigration.”⁸⁹ Only in part was this illegal migration a willful flow to the General Government. In many cases, it constituted a forceful expulsion of Poles and Jews and was outside the official deportation statistics and plans. This confirms an observation made by Heydrich at the conference:

SS Gruppenführer Heydrich noted that no objections in prin-ciple were raised against the evacuation in the direction of the General Government by the competent authorities of the General Government. The objections raised up to now had only been directed against the fact that in the earlier evacuations the figures originally set had been exceeded, and not kept.⁹⁰

For a lengthy citation of remarks by Heydrich and General Government HSSPF Krüger at this conference, see Document 11 in Annex 1.

Difficulties and Challenges in Implementing the Deportation

Despite the overwhelming desire of Warthegau authorities to deport as many Poles and Jews as possible, the General Government authorities that were intended to receive the deportees encountered numerous difficulties and therefore sought to limit the influx. In the aforementioned confer-ence, Obergruppenführer Krüger stated,

[…] Fairly considerable training areas would have to be prepared in the Government-General for the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and SS, which necessitate the relocation of about 100,000–120,000 people within the Government-General itself. It was therefore desirable to take this fact into account during the evacuations in the direction of the Government-General in order to avoid double resettlement.⁹¹

The problem was not only in transporting deportees to the General Government but also in dispersing them in densely populated areas that suffered from chronic scarcities of housing and food. To assist the reader in understanding the kinds of difficulties experienced in the field, part of

a report from the Kreishauptmann of Krasnystaw about the establishment of Jewish quarters (ghettos) follows. First of all, much empty space was needed to receive so many deportees who had been so quickly evicted, and the Warthegau did not have it:

The ordinance once published forbidding Jews to move freely should be used also against the Poles. The housing shortage in cities caused by transports of displaced Poles from the Warthegau has made itself felt in a very unpleasant way. Besides, there is also increase in demand from the German army and the German administration. A relevant Labor Office has already sent a report to the head of the Labor Department in Lublin District. I tried to avoid housing shortages by removing the Jews from the city center and creating a ghetto. However, Jewish homes are in such poor condition that large sums of money are needed for their minimal renovation. For Germans, these houses, naturally, are out of the question.⁹²

The maintenance of the deportees could not rely on financial resources from the General Government budget; the deportees were to earn their livelihood from their own labor. This was obviously quite theoretical because such an outcome, based on ideological decisions, was altogether unrealistic. Five months into the war, the economic situ-ation remained dire due to overcrowding caused by war-inflicted devas-tation, new administrative divisions, and the separation of the General Government from other areas by means that included the Reich customs border. The rupture of ties between manufacturing venues and export markets made things worse, as did widespread looting, rampant unem-ployment, and the masses of displaced persons who were exhausting the strained supplies. Under these circumstances, it was difficult to find suitable jobs for the deportees. The only reasonable solution seemed to be public works:

Gruppenführer Heydrich observed in this connection that the building of the [defensive] ramparts and other plans in the East