Transport from Athens, Attiki Voiotia, Central Greece, Greece to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 02/04/1944

The roundup of the Jews took place a couple of weeks before the Passover holiday. "One day, he [Burger] came to me and explained that he had received an order from Berlin that the first transport from Athens should leave", Linnemann testified. That year, Passover fell on April 8 and the Germans deceivingly announced that the flour needed for baking matzah bread for the holiday was to be distributed at the Athens Synagogue on Friday March 24. This deception could not have failed during a period of mass starvation in Athens. Errikos Sevilias, who had registered some months previously, reported at the Synagogue that morning according to the rules of registration. Other Jews, who had gathered outside the Synagogue following the announcement, were pushed inside the building. "[Inside] there was no sign of flour, and then, suddenly, the big door closed", testifies Errikos Sevilias, "and two Germans who had hidden, stood in front of it, armed to the teeth". When night fell, around 800 Jews were trapped and detained inside the Synagogue. There were also around 180 Jews, Italian nationals, who the German authorities did not differentiate from the Greek Jews. A couple of hours later, the doors opened and the detainees found themselves surrounded by armed soldiers. They were subsequently forced into trucks that took them to the Haidari transit camp, located about 5 km from the Synagogue. There, they joined the Jews of Athens who had been arrested during the previous months either on the streets or in their homes. Holocaust survivor Ida Anzel had escaped from Thessaloniki to Athens and, even though she held a false identity card, she had been betrayed and consequently arrested and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. "One morning, four SS men, accompanied by an interpreter came to my house", she testifies. At his trial Friedrich Linnemann also mentioned the fact that Konstantin Rekanatis, an interpreter at the Judenreferat of the Gestapo, tracked down and arrested those Jews who had not complied with the order and had not registered themselves; these Jews were immediately detained at the Haidari camp. The pursuit of hidden Jews was continuous and persistent: Linnemann further pointed out: "I know that on that same day more Jews who had not come to the Synagogue of their own volition were arrested by Greek or German police and brought to the Department." The detainees were kept inside the Haidari camp in horrible conditions, deprived of food and basic needs for many days until April 2 when the train finally departed. Jews from the cities of Preveza, Arta, Agrinio and Patra, captured during the previous days, joined the Athenian Jews on March 29. About a week later, around 1,900 detainees were transferred by truck to the Rouf Railway station, where approximately 30 cattle cars that had been reserved awaited them. They set off for a long journey to the death camps under the supervision of Gestapo soldiers. This was the first transport to leave Athens and the 20th and largest transport to leave Greek soil....