Transport 18, Train Da 401 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Riga, Rigas, Vidzeme, Latvia on 15/08/1942

On August 15 all deportees were taken from the assembly camp to a freight station located on Putlitzstrasse/Quitzowstrasse in Berlin-Moabit. This usually happened in the early hours of the morning. The deportees were forced to walk about three kilometres to the station via Jagowstrasse, Alt-Moabit, Turmstrasse, Perleberger Strasse, Havelberger Strasse and Quitzowstrasse. Those unable to walk were taken there by truck. At the station, third-class passenger cars ordered by the Gestapo and supplied by the Reichsbahn under the designation Da 401 awaited them and the deportees were ordered to board the train. This transport departed on the same day. It was the 18th out of over 60 transports to the East (Osttransporte) which together took more than 35,000 Jews from Berlin to ghettos and extermination sites in Eastern Europe. It consisted of up to 1,004 men, women and children who mostly came from the city itself. The average age of the deportees was 46. There were 83 children under the age of 15 on the transport. Inmates from the police prison at Alexanderplatz were also aboard in a separate compartment. During the journey the Jews were guarded by a guard detail from the Schupo police. Their destination was not disclosed and after three days in overcrowded cars, they arrived at Skirotava station on the outskirts of Riga on August 18. Soon after their arrival all deportees were shot in the forests in Rumbula and Bikernieki. There are, however, reports that one woman, a nurse, survived. The files of the Department for Jewish affairs at the Berlin Gestapo were burned during the last weeks of the war which makes it difficult to ascertain the exact number of deportees. US chief counsel during the Nuremburg trials Robert Kempner set the number of deportees at 1,004 people in a statement in 1970, and in 1995, 938 names were registered in the memorial book for the murdered Jews of Berlin with no survivors listed. In 2002, however, historian Wolfgang Scheffler mentions one survivor.