Transport X from Caserne Dossin (Malines-Mechelen), Camp, Belgium to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 15/09/1942

Transport X left Mechelen on September 15. It carried 1,048 deportees (538 men and 510 women), completing on time the initial deportation program that had been put up by Eichmann and his staff on June 11, 1942. The aim was to remove a first batch of 10,000 Jews from Belgium. Reeder and BdS Ehlers both reported to Berlin on the successful achievement not without mentioning that the Jews in Belgium had shown considerable resistance. Notwithstanding these difficulties, Ehlers added that he hoped to ramp up the deportation numbers to 20,000 by the end of October. This schedule was the outcome of an agreement between the RSHA and the German National Railway (Reichsbahn) from August 28 to push for an accelerated quota since the Reichsbahn would be prevented from supplying the necessary means of transportation during the winter months of November, December and January. The reasons were not specified. Transport X marked a watershed moment in the policy of the military administration and the BdS. Until now, the official use of deportation terminology was based on a secret order of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command (OKH) from May 13, 1942. The terms "deportation" and "to the East" were omitted in public notices and in any form of correspondence, and instead terms such as "transportation for the purpose of hard labor" (Verschickung zur Zwangsarbeit) had to be used. From now on, the German authorities did not try to conceal their true intentions through cryptic language or fictive campaigns such as the "labor deployment to Germany". Kurt Asche made it clear to the AJB that all Jews would ultimately be deported and that nobody would return to Belgium....