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Their experience closely parallels that of my family.

All of the people and families I have met that were deported for slave labor by the German's have a similar story (so far) so I can probably guess what the larger picture would be.

The Germans were running a slave labor collection campaign run by Riech Commander Erich Koch who orchestrated a deal with Stepan Bandera of the UPA to ethnically cleans (the modern term) the region of Poles for the purpose of capture and deportation.

Wlodzimierz was the largest city with a large rail yard and according to my father the NAZIs set up open rail cars there and told the streams of refugees coming into the city that they were to be used as temporary shelter. ?But once the trains were full the SS came around and slammed the car doors shut and locked them and the trains pulled out headed west.

It may be possible that similar things took place in cities like Lwow but I have no information on that.

Depending on which city they were taken to they were lined up for selection by farmers and factory owners for use as forced labor. ?Those that werent selected or anyone that was considered undesirable were sent on to Neuengamme Concentration camp. ?This is where my father ended up but only after being accused of sabotage at the farm where he was put to work. ?;)

He was one of the few who survived all the way through including the liquidation of the survivors at Lubeck in May 45 by loading them into ships and tricking the RAF into sinking them.

If you are looking for information on this the Germans kept very good records on this and issued "Arbietbuchs" to all of the workers. ?I would expect there to be a record of it somewhere.

These books had records entries in them for every change of status for every prisoner including photo IDs.

Also, after the war UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Recovery Act) documented the origins and path that brought them to what ever point they were liberated at. ?There should be an archive of that as well at the UN.

In our case my father saved all of his documents and Im attaching a couple here as an example.

If you family did not save them there almost certainly has to be a record of their journey at the UN or they would not have been processed for emigration.

I hope this helps!

Bernie