At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, the SS (the elite guard of the Nazi state) and representatives of German government ministries estimated that the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to kill the Jews of Europe, would involve 11 million European Jews, including those from non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and Great Britain. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers and then death.
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Ruth moved to the Netherlands after Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass") in 1938. She and her father had permits to sail to the United States, but Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 and they could not leave. Ruth was deported to the Westerbork camp in 1943 and to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany in 1944. After an exchange agreement with the Allies broke down, Ruth was interned near the Swiss border until liberation by French forces in 1945.
Following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Bart was forced into a ghetto established in his home town. From May to July 1944, the Germans deported Jews from Hungary to the Auschwitz killing center in occupied Poland. Bart was deported by cattle car to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, he was selected to perform forced labor, drilling and digging in a coal mine. As Soviet forces advanced toward the Auschwitz camp in January 1945, the Germans forced most of the prisoners on a death march out of the camp. Along with a number of ill prisoners who were in the camp infirmary, Bart was one of the few inmates who remained in the camp at the time of liberation.
The second of three children, Majlech was born to Jewish parents living 35 miles east of Warsaw in the small, predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn. Majlech's father owned a wholesale grocery store, a restaurant and a gas station, all of which were located on the heavily traveled main road. Majlech attended public elementary school and also received religious instruction.
1933-39: Majlech and his pals, Mindele, Sara and Adam loved to discuss politics. They'd heard the Polish propaganda claiming that German tanks were made of cardboard. Then, just after he turned 19, war broke out. Majlech, his father and brother fled eastward towards the USSR because they were afraid that the Germans would send them away to forced labor. But they returned home when they heard that a battle had been fought at Kaluszyn. They found their mother unharmed.
1940-44: When Majlech heard that the Germans were rounding up Jewish men for deportation to a forced-labor camp, he fled the Kaluszyn ghetto one day in late 1942. He managed to sneak into the Warsaw ghetto to stay with some cousins but on January 18, 1943, he was caught in a roundup and put on a cattle car headed for the Treblinka death camp. The train was moving quite fast, and guards were positioned on its roof, ready to machine-gun escapees. Still, he had to take the risk. He saw someone ahead of him jump. Then it was his turn.
Majlech jumped without getting hurt and returned on foot to Warsaw. He was later deported to the Majdanek and Auschwitz camps. After the war, he immigrated to the United States.
The fourth of five children, Kato was born to a Jewish family who owned a successful furniture store and lumberyard in Ujpest, five miles from Budapest. As a young girl, Kato enjoyed singing and playing the violin in her family "orchestra" in their large home. She was also athletic, and loved to swim, bicycle and play tennis. Best of all, Kato enjoyed rowing on the Danube with her friends.
1933-39: Newly married, Kato moved to Zagyvapalfalva, a town northeast of Budapest with only five or six Jewish families. Her husband owned a large general store there; Kato worked as the cashier. They enjoyed picnicking and other outings with the notary, postmaster and other friends--until 1939. Nazi youths terrified them when they chanted antisemitic slogans and banged on their windows at night. One of them was the notary's teenage son.
1940-44: On March 19, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. Several months later, Kato and her baby boy were deported. Squeezed into a suffocating cattle car for three nightmarish days, she nursed Sandor and also the baby of a friend whose milk had dried up. Helping them off the train at Auschwitz, a man whispered to Kato, "Give your baby to an older woman who will stay with him while you're working. In the evening you will see him again." This calmed her some, and she passed her Sanyika to an elderly woman, and begged her to take care of him.
Kato, age 34, was selected for forced labor. She learned later that the babies and the elderly had been gassed upon arrival. Kato was liberated from the Mauthausen camp in 1945.
Zuzana was the youngest of three children born to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents in the city of Kosice. She was the baby of the family, and they called her Zuzi. Her father was a tailor whose workshop was in the Gruenbergers' apartment.
1933-39: In November 1938, when Zuzana was 5, Hungarian troops marched into Kosice and made it a part of Hungary. The Hungarians changed the name of the city to Kassa. The Hungarian government was friendly to Nazi Germany and introduced anti-Jewish laws in Kosice.
1940-44: In 1941, one year after Zuzana began school, the Hungarians moved the Gruenbergers and other Jewish families to camps in other parts of Hungary. The Gruenbergers were released the following spring and returned to Kosice, but Zuzana's brother and father were taken soon after for slave labor. In 1944 Kosice's 12,000 Jews, including Zuzana, her mother and sister, were rounded up by Hungarians who were cooperating with the Germans. They were sent to a brickyard at the city's edge and put on trains headed for Auschwitz.
Zuzana and her mother were gassed immediately on arriving in Auschwitz in May 1944. Zuzana was 11 years old.
The Dutch government established a camp at Westerbork to intern Jewish refugees who had entered the Netherlands illegally. This sketch of the Westerbork transit camp was made by a Jewish inmate who was able to emigrate to the United States. In early 1942, the German occupation authorities decided to enlarge Westerbork and convert it into a transit camp for Jews. The systematic concentration of Jews from the Netherlands in Westerbork began in July 1942. From Westerbork, Jews were deported to the killing centers in German-occupied Poland.
In the months following the Wannsee Conference, the Nazi regime continued to carry out their plans for the "Final Solution." Jews were "deported"—transported by trains or trucks to six camps, all located in occupied Poland: Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek-Lublin.
The Nazis called these six camps "extermination camps." Most of the deportees were immediately murdered in large groups by poisonous gas. The Germans continued to murder Jews in mass shootings as well, especially in territory they seized from the Soviet Union. The killing centers were in semi-rural, isolated areas, fairly well hidden from public view. They were located near major railroad lines, allowing trains to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the killing sites.
Many of the victims were deported from nearby ghettos, some as early as December 1941, even before the Wannsee meeting. The SS began in earnest to empty the ghettos, however, in the summer of 1942. In two years' time, more than two million Jews were taken out of the ghettos. By the summer of 1944, few ghettos remained in eastern Europe.
At the same time that ghettos were being emptied, masses of Jews and also Roma (Gypsies) were transported from the many distant countries occupied or controlled by Germany, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Italy, North Africa, and Greece. The deportations required the help of many people and all branches of the German government. The victims in Poland were already imprisoned in ghettos and totally under German control. The deportation of Jews from other parts of Europe, however, was a far more complex problem. The German Foreign Ministry succeeded in pressuring most governments of occupied and allied nations to assist the Germans in the deportation of Jews living in their countries.
Key Dates
July 15, 1942 Systematic deportations from the Netherlands begin Jews in the Netherlands have been systematically concentrated in the Westerbork transit camp. The majority of Jews sent to Westerbork remain there only a short time before their deportation to killing centers in the east. Beginning on July 15, 1942, the Germans deport nearly 100,000 Jews from Westerbork: about 60,000 to Auschwitz, over 34,000 to Sobibor, almost 5,000 to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and nearly 4,000 to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The overwhelming majority of those deported are killed upon arrival in the camps.
July 22, 1942 Warsaw Jews deported to Treblinka killing center Between July 22 and mid-September 1942, over 300,000 people are deported from the Warsaw ghetto: more than 250,000 of them are deported to the Treblinka killing center. Deportees are forced to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point), which is connected to the Warsaw-Malkinia rail line. They are crowded into freight cars and most are deported, via Malkinia, to Treblinka. The overwhelming majority of the deportees are killed upon arrival in Treblinka. In September, at the end of the 1942 mass deportation, only about 55,000 Jews remain in the ghetto.
May 15, 1944 Systematic deportations of Jews from Hungary begin German forces occupy Hungary on March 19, 1944. In April 1944, all Jews except those in Budapest are ordered into ghettos. Systematic deportations from the ghettos in Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau begin the next month, in May 1944. In less than three months, nearly 440,000 Jews are deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. The overwhelming majority are killed upon arrival in Auschwitz.
Critical Thinking Questions
Investigate the role of the railroads in and out of Germany in the deportation of the Jews of Europe to their deaths. Were these state railways or privately run, for example?
What percentage of rail traffic during World War II was used for deportations?
What level of organization and administration is required to move, murder, and dispose of millions of people? What other tasks are required before the victims are murdered? Who filled these roles?
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