Transport 44 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 14/10/1943

This transport, the 44th to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in eastern Europe (and thus designated Osttransport 44), departed on October 14, 1943, and arrived in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp not later than October 15. It included 78 deportees, among them two from Breslau, one from Frankfurt am Main and one from Eberswalde.

The deportees included in the later transports from Berlin to Auschwitz were often Jewish spouses in so-called “mixed marriages” who were suspected of violating the anti-Jewish regulations. Another group of deportees consisted of Jews who lived illegally in hiding and were caught, often due to their denunciation by German civilians or Jewish collaborators. Occasionally, Jewish prisoners were transferred from civilian prisons and put on such transports. Prior to their deportation, the deportees were held at one of the Gestapo interment facilities on Iranische Strasse or Grosse Hamburger-Strasse.

There is little information available regarding this transport. Presumably, the deportees were ordered into one or two closed cattle cars which were attached to a regular train. A guard unit, usually composed of several men, was 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 during the later stages of the war might have caused individual transports to take other routes....