Transport from Stuttgart, Stuttgart (Stuttgart), Wuerttemberg, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 13/07/1942

After two considerably large-scale transports to Riga in December 1941 and to Izbica in April 1942, the third transport with 53 deportees left Stuttgart for the East on July 13, 1942. It was attached in Munich to another car which carried 50 Jews from the city and which was described by the Gestapo as a “prisoner’s transport”. Due to a lack of archival records, it is very difficult to verify the identity of the majority of the deportees and to determine the exact route or their fate after their departure from Munich. It can be assumed that they were connected to the transports leaving around the same time from Western and Northern Germany because on July 10-11 several transports left major German towns for an unspecified destination in the East. Two possible destinations are discussed in the literature, the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. On July 10 or 11, a transport with 100 - 200 deportees from the Westfalen-Osnabrück and Schaumburg-Lippe region, with Jews from Bielefeld, Dortmund, Osnabrück, Paderborn, and Minden left Bielefeld. The same time a transport with approximately 200 persons from the Pommern-Brandenburg region, the large majority coming from Köslin, but also from Stettin and Frankfurt/Oder, left for the East. On July 11, a transport with about 100 Jews from the region of Sachsen-Anhalt, most of them from Magdeburg, but also from Dessau left the region. On July 11, a transport with close to 300 people left Hamburg, among them several Jews from Lüneburg. The same day, a transport with about 210 people, around 10 of whom were from Potsdam, left Berlin. A Gestapo official noted on the Berlin deportation list that it was to be connected to the “Hamburg-Auschwitz” transport. On July 16, the Berlin Gestapo sent a list naming the assets of those deported to the Oberfinanzpräsident entitled, “transport to Auschwitz, July 11, 1942”, but “Auschwitz” is crossed out. There are no survivors known from this 17th transport from Berlin to the East who could verify that they went to Auschwitz. Some 12 Jews from Braunschweig, who left their town on July 11, were probably also connected to the transport from Berlin. Their assets were designated as “verfallen” (forfeited) which would indicate a destination outside the Reich (maybe Warsaw), since Auschwitz was located in Upper Silesia, part of the Reich. On July 10 or 11, a transport with approximately 90 Jews, mainly from Schwerin, but also from Rostock and Güstrow, left from the Mecklenburg region and was probably connected to the transport coming from Hamburg in Ludwigslust on July 11. One deportee, Irma Borchardt, managed to write a postcard to her family in Rostock and told them that she was travelling to Warsaw. Another indication that Warsaw might have been the destination is the note written on the deportation list from Hamburg by one Gestapo official, stating that one deportee, Isabella March had died on July 12 in Breslau....