Transport 31 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 01/03/1943

This transport was the 31st to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in Eastern Europe and was thus designated “Osttransport 31”. It departed from the city’s Putlitzstrasse Station in the Moabit district on March 1, 1943 and arrived in Auschwitz the following day.
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.
Historian Danuta Czech notes in the Auschwitz Chronicles that a transport organized by the RSHA arrived in Auschwitz on March 2. It consisted of approximately 1,500 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. 150 men, given Nos. 104740-104889 were sent to forced labour under harsh conditions which they rarely survived. The remaining 1,350 deportees were sent directly to the gas chambers at Birkenau (Asuchwitz II) and murdered....