Transport from Stettin, Stettin (Stettin), Pomerania, Germany to Lipowa, Camp, Poland on 13/02/1940

In the evening hours of February 12, 1940, in a coordinated action, police officers arrived at the apartments of the Jewish inhabitants of Stettin, accompanied by auxiliary manpower provided by the SS, SA and the local branch of the NSDAP. The policemen gave the Jews notice of their upcoming "evacuation", and gave them some time – between thirty minutes to four hours – to pack a single suitcase per person and fill out a declaration of property. Some deportees were encouraged to wear two suits of warm clothes, and to otherwise prepare for cold weather. The deportees had to write their names and dates of birth on their suitcases and on small cards hung around their necks. Most of the inhabitants of the two old age homes in Stettin were amongst the deportees, some of them over 80 years of age. Unlike later transports, many Jews married to non-Jews were deported as well, and their spouses were given the option of joining them. The only ones exempt from deportation were mixed couples in which the non-Jewish member had not converted to Judaism, residents of the Jewish orphanage, and those too ill to be transported. According to historian Jacob Peiser, Lucie Lachmann, the non-Jewish spouse of a Jewish resident of Stettin, managed to travel to Berlin on the morning of February 12, and notified the Reich Association of Jews in Germany of the planned deportation. The Association negotiated with the RSHA, which eventually issued an order to halt the transport. On February 13, the answer from Stettin arrived: “The train has departed, return impossible ”. From their homes, the Jews were taken by vehicles supplied by the Municipal Transport Company (Stettiner Stadtwerke) to the freight station. There, they entered a warehouse where they had to stay until morning. They were registered, forced to hand in their declarations of property, and had to relinquish any valuables they had brought save for simple watches and wedding rings. Each of the deportees received a meager sum of 20 Zloty and an unwieldy sack with provisions for the journey. The deportees were ordered into third class passenger cars, and were joined by deportees from nearby towns such as Anklam, Greifswald, Pasewalk, Stargrad, Stralsund, and Wolgast. The train left Stettin freight station by noon. In the unheated train carriages, the deportees had to endure intense cold. Their rations did not include water, and many suffered from dehydration. During the entire journey, they were not told where they were headed. By the end of the first day, the harsh conditions had already taken their toll. According to a report by Walter Glaser, the train stopped at Schneidermühl (today Pila). From there, it presumably went through Poznan and Warsaw to Lublin. After a three-day journey, the train arrived at the central train station in Lublin. There, the deportees were violently taken off the train by SS men and ethnic German volunteers. The deportees were not given time to prepare, and some of them could not even put on their shoes. They had to leave their luggage at the train station. The deportees were marched in lines of four on unpaved roads in extreme winter conditions. They were brought to concentration camp at 7 Lipowa Street where they received some aid from the local Jewish community. The sick and injured were sent to the Jewish hospital in Lublin. After staying in the Lipowa camp for several hours, the Stettin deportees were divided into three groups based on age, and were sent on horse-drawn sleds to small towns in the region. The oldest, at least 68 in number, were sent to nearby Glusk (8 km), a group of at least 245 people was sent to Belzyce (24 km), and another group of at least 525 people was sent to Piaski (28 km). Historian Wolfgang Schefller mentions 10 additional people who arrived at the Lublin ghetto, and 4 others who were sent to Bychawa. At their destination, the deportees were received by the local Jewish community, and were lodged with local Jewish families. They had to endure the hardships of the holocaust together with their new hosts. The legal mechanisms of expropriation that were used for later transports had not yet been fully developed. As such, the property left behind by the deportees was seized, but was placed under the stewardship of a local attorney by the name of Lenz, and some of it was used to support the deportees at their new residences. However, in 1942, the Local Financial Authority (Oberfinanzpräsident) of Pomerania handled the complete liquidation and confiscation of all Jewish property. Details of the deportation quickly leaked to the foreign media. On February 16, 1940, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung published a highly detailed account of the events that transpired in the homes of the deportees and at the assembly site. In response, the German Foreign Office asked the RSHA to perform future deportations more discreetly. Many of the Jews sent from Stettin died in the months following their arrival due to the poor conditions on the transport and at their destination. In late 1941, the District President of Stettin estimated that over a quarter of the deportees were already dead. Others were sent to labour camps in the following years. The great majority of those who stayed in Lublin were sent to killing sites and annihilation camps when the Lublin ghetto was "liquidated". G.M., a non-Jewish resident of Stettin who was deported together with her Jewish husband, recalls the day of the deportation in her memoirs: “On February 12, 1940, at eight in the evening, two SA men rang our doorbell and asked to be admitted. They told us that we had to leave Stettin that night. They then went through the entire apartment and registered all the valuables […] They then ordered us to pack a small suitcase each with good clothes. […] The older SA man told me: “dress warmly; it is cold where you’re going.” […] Since there were no vehicles available to take us, we waited the entire night in our clothes, watched by the two SA men. They even accompanied us to the toilets. Two or three times during the night, an official in civilian clothes came to ask for a report from them. Around eight in the morning the car came and we, along with eight other residents, each with his SA man, were escorted to the freight station. We stood there for hours, and many women fell unconscious. As our turn came I was separated from my husband because I had no Jewish ID. I was brought before a high ranking officer. He asked me if I would like to divorce my husband and I refused. He called me vile names […]. I was then brought to an office, where I had to sign four times: “I feel myself a part of this transport, and I join of my own volition.” Two men with revolvers stood behind me. Then I was subjected to a physical search, and received a ticket: Group Trip to G… (I forget the name), 20 Zloty and a bag with some bread and sausage. In the train I met up with my husband again. He had to help move the suitcases to the adjoining freight car, and I saw that older men who could not carry their luggage were beaten with rifle butts and kicked as they fell down. When everyone was on board the doors were closed. For lunch we had very salty grit soup, and the train departed at around two o’clock. We travelled for three days without a drop to drink in the freezing train. Since there was not enough room for all of us, we alternated between sitting and standing. […] Sometimes, the train stopped for hours. We heard screams and shots, but could not see anything out of the thickly frozen windows. […] Then during the night at around one o’clock the train suddenly stopped in Lublin. Soldiers in black uniforms pushed the doors open and dragged the old people who were not fast enough. When we were assembled, we were marched to the SS camp in quick step under incessant shootings; we threw away everything we had in our hands. In front of me, a mother collapsed. Her two daughters were pushed forward with rifle butts. Her corpse, and others, were kicked to the side. In the camp, we fell listless on the straw on the floor, but we had to stand to attention from time to time when the SS showed up. At noon, without having drunk or eaten anything, the women were loaded onto open sleds headed for Belzyce or Piaski. The men had to walk the 25 kilometers there. It was a terrible journey[…]. The next day, in the hospital in Lublin, 130 amputations of frostbitten appendages were performed, among them on a seven year old girl, who had both her feet, all the fingers on one hand and some fingers on the other removed.” Sarah Erlichman (Sojka), who worked in the Jewish Hospital in Lublin, recalls the arrival of the deportees: “The first Jews to arrive at Lublin from abroad are the German Jews from Szczecin. The young were sent to neighboring towns, the elderly and the infirm who could not march in the snow in 35 degree cold weather were admitted to the hospital. I oversaw that ward. It was a sight of sorrow and despair. People who used to be wealthy, and who remained German patriots (many of them are still wearing their iron crosses that they were awarded for their service in the first World War) were thrown out of the sleds like fish. All their belongings were taken from them, even what they were allowed to take. They retained only the keys to their suitcases, which they held onto meticulously. They all had frost-bitten hands and feet. In one day, we had to perform dozens of operations on fingers. Seven to eight people died in the ward each day…”