Transport from Breslau, Breslau (Breslau), Silesia (Lower), Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 05/03/1943

From the end of February 1943 onwards, the so-called Fabrikaktion (Operation Factory), was implemented across the Reich. The Jews in Breslau, who at the time were still engaged in forced labor related to the war, were deported. On March 5, 1943, the German authorities took the last Jews from Breslau to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, in a transport registered as "Aktion VII" or "Märzwelle" (March wave).^[1]

At the end of February, the Breslau Gestapo began to appear at the homes of Jews and surprised whole families with orders for deportation. This is what happened to an anonymous witness, who in 1963, testified of his family's deportation to Auschwitz at the hearing against members of the Breslau Gestapo. His house at 14 Fischer Lane was surrounded by Gestapo, and all the family members in the building were ordered to assemble outside on the street within half an hour, with a hand gesture. The witness, back then just seventeen years old, together with his father and mother, were driven with the other Jews of 14 Fischer Lane to Breslau's main assembly site, set up at the former Jewish community center "Gesellschaft der Freunde" (Society of the Friends), at 3-4 Neue Graupen Street (Krupnicza). Here, each family had to sign a waiver of property.^[2] In the cellar, Gestapo men searched the luggage of the deportees.^[3]

Kurt Friedrich G., was surprised in his home with a deportation order by three Gestapo officers on February 26. They gave him fifteen minutes to pack, while they stole his belongings from his home. Subsequently, Kurt Friedrich G., his wife, and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Rita, had to board a truck with other Jews already on board. They were taken to the assembly site at Neue Graupen Street, picking up more deportees along the way. According to Kurt Friedrich G., in the Freundesaal at the "Gesellschaft der Freunde", over several days, some 600 to 1,000 Jews were assembled and registered.^[4]...