Transport 1 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 18/10/1941

On October 18 all deportees were taken from the assembly camp to Grunewald station. Those unable to walk were taken there by truck while the others were made to walk about seven kilometres across the city in the pouring rain. At the station third-class passenger cars awaited them and the deportees were ordered to board the train. During the journey the Jews were guarded by a guard detail from the Schupo police. All Jewish property was sold by the Gestapo after the transport left. This first transport from Berlin (Welle I – “Wave I”) departed from Grunewald station in Berlin on October 18 and arrived in Lodz on October 19, 1941. The train was designated DA 4 by the Reichsbahn and was the first 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. The files of the Department for Jewish affairs at the Berlin Gestapo were burned during the last weeks of the war and there are no name lists available for the first eight transports from Berlin to the East, including the first four transports to Lodz. After the war, copies of Gestapo files and index cards were discovered in the archive of the Oberfinanzpräsident Berlin-Brandenburg which made it possible to determine the majority of the names of the deportees, but it is still difficult to ascertain their exact number. This transport consisted of 1,013 - 1,096 people and 1,093 names were registered in the memorial book of murdered Berlin Jews....