ushmm
Posted: Oct 27, 2008 12:02:22 pm
According to _The Deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination_ by Andrzej Strzelecki, there was a group of Lodz Jews sent following the ghetto liquidation via Auschwitz to Stutthof and then to the Flossenburg subcamp in Dresden. Here is what Strzelecki says (p. 85-86):
"Dresden, a sub-camp founded on the premises of the Jasmat cigarette factory (Schandauerstrasse 68), which was taken over by a firm called Bernsdorf u. Co. Up to the end of November 1944 some 500 Jews, men, women, and children, were held in this camp and referred to as the Metallgruppe. The core member of this work squad had also belonged to the Metallgruppe 'department' in the Lodz Ghetto. At the Dresden factory they were put to work in the production of ammunition. In 1945, some of them were evacuated to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto, where at registration 91 women stated that before their deportation to the German interior they had been in Lodz (ie, the Lodz Ghetto). Many members of the Metallgruppe died in the last weeks of the war. Those who survived were liberated either at Theresienstadt (men and women) or during a 'death march' (women only) somewhere near Pilsen in Bohemia...."
".... Apart from professional metalworkers, the Lodz 'department' employed many members of families with good connections.... Their route to Dresden took them through the camps of Auschwitz and Stutthof. They were first sent to KL Auschwitz sometime at the end of August or perhaps the beginning of September 1944. There they stayed for a few days but were not subjected to any selections. In the over two months next spent at KL Stutthof the group's membership was somewhat changed: in place of prisoners who had died or were selected as unfit for work new group members were added. Some of the group's member were sent for a time to Szamotuly (or Obrzyck) first to unload machinery exported from the Ghetto and then to load it into freight cars that would take it to Dresden. After that, they were sent back to the Stutthof camp.... At the end of November 1944 the whole group was transported from Stutthof to Dresden. There in the factory halls the work group had to install the machinery that had been brought over from the Ghetto. And there they worked until the town was bombed on 13th February 1945. At Dresden Chimowicz [head of the Metallgruppe 'department' in the ghetto] was made the camp elder. He was brutal towards the prisoners under his charge and unscrupulously stole their food rations."
Based on the info from Strzelecki, it might make sense to see if L. Tabakszmeker (or Estera Tabakschmeker and her family members) were linked in any way to the Metallgruppe in the ghetto. Also, it would make sense to look for their names in transports from Auschwitz to Stutthof in early September, as well as records related to prisoners who died or were liberated at Theresienstadt.
