Transport 23 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 29/11/1942

This transport to Auschwitz was the first comprised of German Jews from the “Altreich” (the territories of “Old Germany” prior to 1938). It was the 23rd to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in Eastern Europe and was thus designated “Osttransport 23”. It departed fro the city’s Putlitzstrasse Station in the Moabit district on November 29, 1942 and arrived in Auschwitz within one or two days. Two further transports followed during the year. There were 998 Jews on this transport including 36 children from the Auerbach orphanage at 162 Schönhauser Allee in the district of Prenzlauer Berg, 20 of whom were below the age of five. Prior to the deportation, the Jews were kept in assembly camps spread throughout Berlin for some days. At these assembly sites the Jews were forced to sign a declaration authorizing the transfer of their property to the State. On the day of their deportation the deportees were loaded into a train consisting of closed freight cars. A guard unit, usually composed of two SS men, was usually posted in the control compartment. The train usually went to Auschwitz via Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice), but the constant strain put on the German railway system might have caused individual transports to take other routes. Upon arrival outside the Auschwitz camp complex, the deportees were subject to a selection process carried out by the SS. The majority of the deportees were immediately sent to the gas chambers at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and murdered. The other deportees were sent to forced labour under harsh conditions which they rarely survived. According to historian Rita Meyhoefer only one of the 998 deportees is known to have survived.