Transport 55 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 12/07/1944

This transport, the 55th to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in eastern Europe (and thus designated Osttransport 55), departed on July 12, 1944, and arrived in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp the next day. It included between 30 and 31 deportees. The deportees included in the later transports from Berlin to Auschwitz were often Jewish spouses in so-called “mixed marriages” who lost their protection due to divorce or death of the non-Jewish spouse, or 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. There is little information available regarding this transport. Presumably, at the day of deportation, the deportees were ordered into a closed cattle car which was attached to a regular train. A guard unit, usually composed of two 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 during the later stages of the war might have caused individual transports to take other routes....