On this day in 1938, Nazi officers began ordering the arrest of 17,000 Polish Jews who were living under the German Reich. As Jews were violently expelled from Germany and sent over the Polish border, Poland became the first mass deportation of Jews from Germany. The previous spring, Germany annexed Austria. In doing so, the Polish government became fearful that the Austrian Jews who had Polish citizenship would return to Poland as a way of escaping persecution.The parliament of Poland passed a law in 1938 that enabled them to denationalize Polish citizens who had been living outside of Poland for five or more years. Then, on October 9, 1938, the government ordered that passports issued abroad required a stamp by the Polish consulate, making it impossibly difficult for Austrian Jews of Polish descent to escape persecution awaiting them in Austria. The German government viewed this as a threat to their plans of expelling Polish Jews from Germany.On October 26, 1938, German officials told Poland that if it did not rescind the order, Germany would deport the remaining Polish citizens before Poland’s passport order came into effect. Without waiting for a response, the Reich Security Main Office ordered all state police offices in Germany to begin rounding up Polish Jews with passports, place them in protective custody, and transport them to the Polish border immediately. Initially detained in prisons or transit camps, the Polish Jews were rounded up on October 28 and 29. Only allowed to take a few possessions, they were sent back to Poland in specially-guarded trains where the majority of them were left in bordering towns. Since the Polish border guards were originally unaware of the Germans’ plan, the first trains that passed through were completely undisturbed. As the Polish government grew aware of the Germans’ actions, the transports slowed down as German guards had to take the expelled Jews across by foot.A reception camp with emergency accommodation was created, where 8,000 people stayed, some for several months. American Jewish organizations provided as much aid as they were able to. The Polish government allowed some Jews to travel further into Poland if they had relatives there, but when Germany invaded on September 1, 1939, the Jews were once again under German rule, and very few survived.