Transport from Bohusovice, Litomerice, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 24/08/1943

Although transports began leaving Bialystok for the extermination camp of Treblinka as early as February 1943, the final liquidation of the ghetto took place in August 1943. In the early morning of August 16, the SS and Ukrainian police forces encircled the ghetto and ordered all residents to report to an assembly site on Jurowiecka Street. From there, the inhabitants of the ghetto were transported to labour camps and killing sites where the majority of them were murdered. At that time, according to the testimony of Hadassah Levkovitz, secretary to Ephraim Barash, head of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Bialystok, the SS demanded that the Council deliver 1,200 children into their hands. Unofficially, they were told the children would be sent to Palestine, and exchanged for German nationals. Levkovitz, a survivor of this transport, attests that to that end, 400 orphans were taken from the two orphanages in the ghetto, and 800 additional children were brought in by their parents in an attempt to save them. Hella Wolkenberg, on the other hand, claims in her testimony that at the assembly site, the Jewish police force (Ordnungsdienst) demanded that all children be separated from their families and returned to the ghetto; some families handed over their children willingly, whereas in most cases the children were taken away by force. A small team consisting of caretakers and medical staff was assembled. These included both Levkovitz and Wolkenberg, along with about 20 others. Among the caretakers were families with foreign papers and immigration certificates to Palestine. The children and the caretakers were housed at a separate assembly site, at No. 10 Fabryczna Street...