Transport from Alexandroupolis, Evros, Thrace, Greece to Treblinka, Extermination Camp, Poland on 05/03/1943

A number of the Commissariat's representatives were immediately sent to all the towns with Jewish populations in Thrace and Macedonia and to locations where the deportees would need to be transferred from one train to another. Yaroslav Kalitzin was appointed coordinator of the operation. On March 1 he prepared a detailed plan to round up the Jews from the region and to concentrate them at temporary assembly sites before their transfer to Bulgaria and then on to Poland. This plan was distributed to all the representatives of the army, police and civil administration in the area who were to be involved in its execution. Since the number of the Jews in Alexandroupolis was relatively small, the round up was executed by local police in the early hours of March 4. Twelve Jewish families were arrested and sent to Komotini, the nearest city with an assembly site set up for Jewish deportees. There, they were searched for money and valuables, deloused and their luggage was disinfected. After a day at the assembly site, 904 Jews from Komotini and Alexandroupolis were loaded onto a train with 20 cars which brought them to the transit deportation centers inside Bulgaria. One person from Alexandroupolis died on the way to the train station and one from Komotini died later during the journey. The train arrived at Sidirokastro the same evening. Here the track gauge changed and so the deportees were transferred to two smaller trains. Those from Komotini were sent to an assembly site in Dupnitsa and the deportees from Alexandroupoli and Drama were sent to Gorna Dzhumaya. Before reaching these cities, the deportees were once again transferred from train to train at Simitli. The transfers which lasted between 4 and 6 hours were carried out in a brutal manner by the Bulgarian police under the supervision of the representatives of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, Atanas Ovcharov and Slavcho Popov....