World War II and the Holocaust

With the German invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, Kowale became part of Turek Kreis in Reichsgau Wartheland territory annexed directly to Nazi Germany. Kowale county was chosen as the location of a transit ghetto for Polish Jews from the entire region spanning 16 settlements including Turek.^[4] The ghetto – centred around Czachulec – was known in German as Heidemühle in reference to an old windmill standing there; all Polish families were expelled from the zone with younger Poles taken to Germany for slave labour. The Nazis ordered the creation of a single Judenrat council for all Jewish communities together. The ghetto held 3,700 Jews; up to 18 families per each farmhouse living anywhere they could including in barnyards.^[5]

In October 1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange chose nearby Chełmno as the location of the first ever extermination camp.^[6] The gas vans manufactured in Berlin were delivered some time in November.^[7] On 8 November 1941, all Jews from the Kowale Pańskie Ghetto were herded in the village of Bielawki for a selection. About 1,100 people were declared "incapable of work" and on 13–14 November transported to the death camp in Chełmno. The younger and stronger men in Kowale were deported to forced labour near Poznań in early 1942, followed by a group of Jewish women. The final liquidation of the ghetto took place on 20 July 1942, when the remaining Jews were sent to Chełmno, but also murdered outside the village, along with Jewish hospital patients and 12 Jewish policemen. The inhabitants of Babiak, Dąbie, Dęby Szlacheckie, Grodziec, Izbica Kujawska, Kłodawa, Koło, Nowiny Brdowskie, and Sompolno were deported to Chełmno before March 1943.^[8]