The Journey
The first trains operated on 16 October 1941, transporting Jews from central Germany to ghettos in the east. Subsequently called "Sonderzüge" (special trains), the trains had low priority for movement, and would proceed to the mainline after all other transport, inevitably extending shipping time scales.
The trains consisted of formations of either third class passenger carriages, but mainly freight cars or cattle cars—the latter were packed, according to SS regulations, with 50, but sometimes up to 150 occupants. No food or water was provided, while the freight cars were only provided with a bucket latrine. A small barred window provided irregular ventilation, which sometimes resulted in deaths from either suffocation or the exposure to the elements.
Sometimes the Germans did not have enough cars to make it worth their while to do a major shipment of Jews to the camps, so the victims were stuck in a switching yard—"standing room only"—sometimes for days. At other times, the trains had to wait for more important military trains to pass. An average transport took about four and a half days. The longest transport of the war, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the train got to the camps and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead. The armed guards shot anyone trying to escape.
Due to cramped conditions, many deportees died in transit. On 18 August 1940, Waffen SS officer Kurt Gerstein later wrote in the Gerstein Report, that he had witnessed at Belzec: (the arrival of) "45 wagons with 6,700 people of whom 1,450 were already dead on arrival." To avoid contamination between loads, at times the floor of the freight cars had a layer of quick lime, which burned the feet of the human cargo.
Once alighted, the remaining passengers were split into two groups. The old, the young, the sick, and the infirm were sent immediately to be killed, initially in gassing vans and later in the gas chambers. The Gerstein Report states:
| “ | After the doors are closed... the diesel starts. Until this moment the people live in these 4 chambers, four times 750 people in 4 times 45 cubic metres! Again 25 minutes pass. Right, many are dead now. One can see that through the small window in which the electric light illuminates the chambers for a moment. After 28 minutes only a few are still alive. Finally, after 32 minutes, everyone is dead! | ” |
The rest were to put to work, frequently in the harshest conditions, which included the burial of victims in mass graves.
Read more about this topic: Holocaust Train
Famous quotes containing the word journey:
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The time passes so quickly during these full and active middle years that most people arrive at the end of middle age and the beginning of later maturity with surprise and a sense of having finished the journey while they were still preparing to commence it.”
—Robert Havighurst (20th century)