Transport 3 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 29/10/1941

On October 29 all deportees were taken from the assembly camp to Grunewald station. Those unable to walk were taken there by truck while the others were made to walk about seven kilometres across the city. At the station third-class passenger cars awaited them and the deportees were ordered to board the train. During the journey the Jews were guarded by a guard detail from the Schupo police. All Jewish property was sold by the Gestapo after the transport left. This third transport from Berlin (Welle III – “Wave III”) departed from Grunewald station in Berlin on October 29 and arrived in Lodz on October 30, 1941. Historian Alfred Gottwaldt reports that some mention a departure date of October 27 which he thinks is unlikely, but there is the possibility that two days passed between beginning the registration process at the assembly camp and the departure of the train. This transport was the third out of over 60 transports to the East (Osttransporte) which together took more than 35,000 Berlin Jews to ghettos and extermination sites in Eastern Europe. The files of the Department for Jewish affairs at the Berlin Gestapo were burned during the last weeks of the war and there are no name lists available for the first eight transports from Berlin to the East, including the first four transports to Lodz. After the war, copies of Gestapo files and index cards were discovered in the archive of the Oberfinanzpräsident Berlin-Brandenburg which made it possible to determine the majority of the names of deportees, but it is still difficult to ascertain their exact number. This transport consisted of 906 to 908 people. 905 names were registered in the memorial book of murdered Berlin Jews. Some books set the number of deportees at 1,009....