As part of the so-called Nisko Plan, a total number of seven transports with more than 5,000 Jews were dispatched from Ostrava, Katowice and Vienna in late October 1939. From Ostrava, 901 men went to Nisko in the first transport, and apparently 322 men in the second.
The camp in Nisko did not last long. In the spring of 1940, it was closed down and the Jews who remained there were allowed to return home. However, many escaped from the camp or were driven towards the demarcation line with the Polish territory occupied by the Soviet Union.
If they did not die on the way, they were often arrested by the Soviet authorities and labelled as spies. Many faced deportation to Soviet labor and concentration camps, the Gulag.
Those who lived to see its establishment, eventually joined the so-called Svoboda’s Army directly from the gulag and took part in the fights against Nazi Germany. Some of them managed to survive the frontline deployment, fought their way into Czechoslovakia and many of them even reached Ostrava.
A photograph from Karel Borský's interview with the USC Shoah Foundation.