Transport from Poznan, Poznan, Poznan, Poland to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 22/08/1943

On August 22, 1943, a train transport of 2,000 Jews left the city of Poznań (Posen), bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Jews had been brought to the city’s train station from forced labor camps in Poznań and its vicinity, probably that day. The forced laborers from the nearby camps, such as Luckland (Łukowo), were brought in trucks; those from the camps in Poznań, such as the facilities on Kobylepole Street (Gutenbrunn) and on Starołęka (Luisenheim), were force-marched to the station, guarded by German police, who shot to death at least one of the deportees because he was supposedly not walking fast enough. Some of the Jewish inmates tried to escape during the liquidation of the labor camps, but with very limited success.

SS personnel guarded the train during the journey of about 12 hours; the prisoners probably reached their destination on the same day. According to a survivor, Tola (Moskal) Kopyto, more wagons were added to their transport along the way, carrying women and children as well as elderly people. So thirsty were the children that they licked their mother’s perspiration, and one mother even gave her child her urine to drink. People died in the wagons, and when the doors were opened upon arrival in the town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz) their bodies tumbled out. ...