Transport 19, Train Da 403 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Riga, Rigas, Vidzeme, Latvia on 05/09/1942

On September 5 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 403 awaited them and the deportees were ordered to board the train. This transport departed on the same day. It was the 19th 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 804 men, women and children who mostly came from the city itself. The average age of the deportees was 50. There were also 47 children under 15. Inmates from the police prison at Alexanderplatz were also aboard in a separate compartment. In Insterburg and Eydtkuhnen (today Chernyakhovsk and Chernyshevskoye, both located in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia), 250 persons from East Prussia whose names are not known joined the transport. 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 September 8.
From the transport, 80 men were singled out for their skills and sent to forced labour where they had to work under impossible conditions. According to historian Wolfgang Scheffler in 2002, only six of them survived the war. All others were shot on September 8 in the Rumbula and Bikernieki forests shortly after their arrival....