Berlin-Moabit, Freight train station (Putlitz Street)
Freight Train
Auschwitz Birkenau,Extermination Camp,Poland
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 cattle 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....