Transport 46 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 08/11/1943

This transport, the 46th to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in eastern Europe (and thus designated Osttransport 46), departed on November 8, 1943, and arrived in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on November 10. It included 50 deportees. 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 t Grosse Hamburger-Strasse. There is little information available regarding this transport. Presumably, the deportees were ordered into a single closed cattle car which was attached to a regular train. A guard unit, usually composed of two 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....