Transport from Leipzig, Leipzig (Leipzig), Saxony, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 13/07/1942

After two considerably large-scale transports to Riga in January 1942 and to Belzyce in May 1942, the third transport left Leipzig for the East with up to 180 Jews on July 13, 1942; among them persons from Chemnitz and townlets in the Saxony region. Whereas the destination of the previous transports from Leipzig were known, both the deportation list and the card file of the Jewish community for the July transport merely state “13.7.42 East”. After their departure from Leipzig, the Jews were most probably joined by more deportees from other transports leaving at around the same time from major towns in western and northern Germany as well as from Luxembourg for an unspecified destination in the East. Two possible destinations for these trains are discussed in the literature, the Warsaw Ghetto or Auschwitz, but the most likely destination was Auschwitz-Birkenau. The deportees from Leipzig, who left the city on July 13, 1942, were probably joined by 53 Jews from a transport which had left Stuttgart via Munich on the same day. On July 12, a transport with 24 Jews had left Luxembourg and was probably also connected to the transport from Saxony. A day after chairman of the Jewish Council in Luxembourg Alfred Oppenheimer received information that the upcoming transport originating in Chemnitz would collect Jews from several towns and join a train to the East; he apprised his community that the transport would "[...] depart from Chemnitz on July 13 at midnight". Ultimately these transports were connected to others that had left from a number of northern and central German cities such as Bielefeld, Braunschweig, Köslin, Schwerin, Berlin, Magdeburg, Hamburg, etc., between July 10 and 11. All the transports arrived as a collective transport in Auschwitz between July 14 and 16 with close to 1,000 deportees in total....