Transport 24 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 09/12/1942

This transport was the 24th to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in Eastern Europe and was thus designated “Osttransport 24”. It departed from the city’s Putlitzstrasse Station in the Moabit district on December 9, 1942 and arrived at Auschwitz on December 10. There were 994 Jews on this transport. Apparently, a small transport that left Vienna on December 8 was attached to it en route to Auschwitz. The Jews were kept in assembly camps spread throughout Berlin for some days prior to deportation. 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 ordered 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. Historian Danuta Czech notes in the Auschwitz Chronicles that a transport organized by the RSHA arrived in Auschwitz on December 10. Contradictory to the number of Jews that historians Alfred Gottwald and Mayerhoefer mention, Czech states that the transport consisted of 1,000 Jewish men, women and children originating from various cities in Germany. Upon the train’s arrival, the SS carried out a selection process. 137 men and women were sent to the camp. They were given Nos. 26621-26645. The remaining 898 deportees were sent directly 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 historian Rita Meyhoefer only two of the deportees are known to have survived.