Transport from Dresden, Dresden (Dresden Bautzen), Saxony, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 02/03/1943

The joint transport, which left Dresden propably on March 2, 1943, consisted of a number of transports with Jews from Paderborn, Hannover, Dresden and other western and eastern German towns. In light of the advanced destruction of the Jewish communities in the Reich, the Gestapo offices in small and midsized towns were, at this point in time, unable to assemble large scale transports to the East according to the RSHA guidelines. Therefore, the deportation train travelled eastwards, stopping at a number of towns to pick up smaller groups of deportees to make up the numbers. According to current research, when the train left Germany, it carried a total of around 1,500 Jews. At least two survivors, among them one from Dresden, recall that the train stopped several times for a period of hours and that it grew in length. It was the third large transport that left the Reich as a result of the "Factory Action". Almost all deportees from Dresden were arrested in connection with it. On the way to Dresden, it transported 99 persons from Paderborn, 84 from Bielefeld and 38 from Hannover. Maybe some Jews, who previously had emigrated from Norway, were also loaded on that train. Prior to the deportation from Dresden around 350 Jews from the districts of Erfurt, Halle (Saale), Leipzig, Chemnitz and Plauen had also been arrested during the Factory Action. In Dresden these Jews were concentrated in the Hellerberg camp that had been established at the Goehle plant of the Zeiss Ikon Company in the northern outskirts of Dresden to intern slave workers. Earlier on January 17, 1943, Victor Klemperer, the philologist from Dresden had noted in his diary: "[...] large number of Jews are being given the notice. Half the (Jewish) workforce has already given the sack [...] Now there is supposed to be a new Reich decree: No Jew can be employed in an armaments plant anymore [...] Poland looms." In the early morning hours of February 27, 1943, the Hellerberg camp was declared a detention camp. (“Polizeihaftlager”), it was fenced off and all the Jews were put under strict watch. By March 2, the scheduled date of the transport, Jews from Dresden who up to that point had lived outside the camp, as well as Jews from other cities in Saxony, were taken to Hellerberg camp, which now functioned as the assembly site for the transport. Victor Klemperer, who was spared from internment in the camp, noted in the afternoon of March 2 in his diary: "The transport leaves tomorrow, the Jewish camp [Hellerberg] together with the addition of others from Halle and Erfurt. It cannot be assumed that we shall see a single one of the masses again. Left behind are only those protected by mixed marriage. Protected for how long"? Heinz Meyer, who had been dismissed from Zeiss-Ikon, was one of the deportees. In 1945 he wrote about his departure from Dresden: "[...] and after two days we were transported, we had to leave everything behind, we were only allowed to take a small suitcase with us..." In the evening of March 2, almost all the Jews from the camp, men, women and children, numbering approximately 350 persons, among them 293 Jews from Dresden, were marched to the Dresden-Neustadt cargo station. According to Henry Meyer from Dresden, however, at least some of the deportees were marched to the train station in the early morning hours, "[...] loaded, doors closed and off we went." The Jews were loaded into freight wagons, in an alphabetical order and around 40-50 persons per wagon, as Henry Meyer further remembered. During the journey the deportees didn't have any food and suffered from insufficient sanitary facilities. At least two persons suffered from heart attacks and died during the transport. According to Alfred Gottwaldt, after leaving Dresden during the night of March 2-3, the train continued on the most commonly used route through Görlitz, Liegnitz, Breslau, Oppeln and Kattowitz. "The train stopped", as Henry Meyer remembered, "along the way several times. You heard voices, noises, but we couldn't see. There was a hole, a window in the car, which was too high. I think some people tried to get up and see, but what was there to see, they didn't let us out, we were locked in." The deportation train arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on March 3, 1943. On the same day two transports arrived in the extermination camp with the equal number of deportees on board. Given the existing documents and testimonies of survivors, and contrary to the opinion of other researchers, the transport from Paderborn, Hannover and Dresden seems to have been the first to arrive. The train arrived and the doors were opened, and, as Henry Meyer recalled, "immediately the tenor of this camp was shown. [...], there was no reason of doing anything fast, but in every language you heard that word first, schneller [faster], lauf [run], a terrible rush suddenly, for nothing. We jumped out, others didn't, older people immediately got hurt, [...] it was horrible. And in between the SS guards with their German shepherds [dogs] and with sticks, just beating." The deportees had to leave everything behind in the train and underwent a selection. According to Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle, 535 men and 145 women were transferred to the work camp. All the other deportees were taken to the gas chambers and murdered, or, in the words of Heinz Meyer: they "[...] didn't even set foot in the camp. [...]. When I write that the people didn't even set foot in the camp, I mean that they were immediately gassed".