Transport 28, Train Da 15 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 03/02/1943

This transport was the 28th to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in Eastern Europe and was thus designated “Osttransport 28”. It departed from the city’s Putlitzstrasse Station in the Moabit district at 17:20 on February 3, 1943 and arrived at Auschwitz the following day at 10:48. There were 952 Jews on this transport, among them patients from the Jewish hospitals located at Auguststrasse 17 and Iranische Strasse 2-4. The department for Jewish Affairs at the Berlin Gestapo, headed by Walter Stock and his deputy Max Stark, was in charge of organising this transport together with the Department of Jewish Affairs at the RSHA. 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. This train was designated special train DA15. 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 February 4. It consisted of 1,000 Jewish men, women and children originating from Berlin. Upon arrival outside the Auschwitz camp complex, the deportees were subject to a selection process carried out by the SS. 181 men, given Nos. 99915-10095, and 106 women, given Nos. 34183-34288 were sent to forced labour under harsh conditions which they rarely survived. The remaining deportees were sent directly to the gas chambers at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and murdered. According to historian Rita Meyhoefer five of the deportees are known to have survived.