Transport, Train Da 27 from Weimar, Weimar (Weimar), Thuringia, Germany to Belzyce, Lublin, Lublin, Poland on 10/05/1942

The deportation train with the number “Da 27” to the Belzyce ghetto, a small townlet 27 kilometers southwest of Lublin in the General Government was the first transport from Weimar. In March 1942, the Gestapo had ordered the train from the Reichsbahn (the German railroad company) scheduled for Trawniki. However, at the end of April 1942, the timetable for the transport had been changed to accommodate rerouting via Leipzig and the destination of Izbica. According to the Reichsbahn’s day-schedule (Tagesverzeichnis der Reisesonderzüge) the deportation train originated in Weimar where the main assembly point for the deportation of the Jews from Thuringia was located. However, Leipzig was another city through which many of the deportees from Saxony were taken en route to the General Government. The final destination of the train was determinated only after its depature on May 10, 1942 from Weimar (Thuringia) via Leipzig (Saxony). Two days later, on May 12, 1942, the deportees from Thuringia and Saxony arrived in Belzyce. However, at least one person on the transport seems to have been taken to the Lublin ghetto. Apart from Martin Mutschmann, the Gauleiter (district party leader) of Saxony, there were other key figures involved in the implementation of this transport: The head of the Gestapo office in Leipzig, Ernst Kaussmann, as well as his colleagues in Weimar (Gustav vom Felde) and Chemnitz (Johannes Thümmler) oversaw this transport. The head of the Judenreferat (Jewish Desk) at the Leipzig Gestapo, Paul Zenner was in charge of the deportation. Stadtamtmann (City Official) Kurt Voigt and his co-worker Felix Gerbhardt were responsible for local Jewish policies. Their direct superior was Botho Furch, personal aide to the mayor of Leipzig, Alfred Freyberg. In his New Years’ address on January 14, 1942, Freyberg, with full knowledge of the deportations from Leipzig, announced: “It is to be hoped that the number of Jews [in Leipzig] will be reduced significantly during the coming year.” Furch, as the head of the "office for the Promoting of Housing" (Amt zur Förderung des Wohnungsbaus) – an institution obviously working on behalf of the Non-Jewish citizens, was responsible for the forced concentration of Leipzig’s Jewish citizens into "Jew houses” (“Judenhäuser”). Together with Voigt and Gerbhardt, he coordinated their move from the “Jew Houses” to the deportation site. Houses in which Jews were concentrated and isolated had been set up in Germany since 1939 by the Nazi authorities independently of the deportation process but were increasingly used during its course. In Leipzig alone up to 40 of these houses were set up in the city center. Paula Stern, who left Arnstadt for Berlin before the deportation, remembers how her family was forced to move into one of these in Arnstadt where they had to share one room with two other families. Jews still living in their own homes had to mark their door with a black Jewish Star (“Judenstern”). The day before deportation, the men, women and children were not allowed to leave their homes. They were ordered to appear at the assembly site or were taken from their homes by the Gestapo. Identification papers were taken from the Jews, which were then stamped with a deportation number. Attempted suicides became regular occurrences amongst the Jewish community in 1942. The majority of the deportees were between 30 and 60 years old, but around 46 children and babies were also on the transport. The youngest one had just turned 9 months. Different sources state the number of deportees between 1,000 and 1,200. Most of them were German citizens, although around 40% of the deported were labeled as “stateless” (staatenlos). The deportation list shows the scale of persecution and extermination: Whole families were deported, from babies to grandparents. For townlets like Borna or Groitzsch, only one Jew is listed from each, demonstrating that the Nazi Regime aimed for a “Jew-free" Thuringia and Saxony. The once lively Jewish communities in this region were annihilated. The general guidelines recommended that Gestapo branches force the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) and local Jewish leaders to assist in preparing the transports. Dr. Fritz Grunsfeld, the administrative director of the city’s Jewish community, was responsible for this task in Leipzig. He was ordered to provide names and adresses of local Jews according to criteria specified by the local Gestapo (such as age groups). As soon as the Gestapo in Leipzig obtained the inforamtion, copies of the deportation list passed on to their local Department for Jewish Affairs (“Judenreferat”). Those Jews selected for deportation were notified in writing. They were to bring a sum of 50 Reichmarks, luggage weighing up to 50 kg, a set of clothes, suitable shoes, bedding, tableware, and food supplies for 3-4 days. They had to leave everything else behind which became German state property, courtesy of the Eleventh Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law. The deportation was accompanied by expropriation, which was carried out with the cooperation of the civil and police authorities. The manner in which this was done varied according to location. Usually, a couple of Gestapo men, members of the Jewish Desk, rounded up the Jews selected for deportation. The deportees were required to hand over their apartments after they had paid all outstanding taxes. The Gestapo searched the deportees’ luggage and the apartment, and confiscated valuables and food rationing cards. Subsequently they sealed the apartments. This process usually took place 1-2 days prior to the actual deportation. At the assembly site the Jews were forced to sign a declaration detailing their various assets and authorizing the transfer of their property to the State and were also required to hand over any valuables and currency they might have in their possession. In the days following deportation, the Nazi institutions and civil authorities continued to seize and liquidate the assets left behind by the Jewish deportees. A day after the transport had left Leipzig, the privately owned local auction house Hans Klemm, at No. 19 Große Fleischergasse, took over the left luggage from the assembly site and auctioned it off publicly. Ads in the local newspapers announced the auction dates. As early as January 1942, during the preparations for the deportations from Leipzig, the head of the local Gestapo, Ernst Kaussmann held a meeting with representatives of the Regional Ministry of Finance (Oberfinanzpräsidium) headed by Friedrich Sobe, the public employment office (Arbeitsamt), and the Municipality (Stadtverwaltung). The municipality purchased two properties that had belonged to deported Jews and further valuables in a public auction. The German Army (Wehrmacht) purchased furniture and household goods. High-ranking persons in the municipality, such as Mayor Freyberg, privately bought valuables like pianos and carpets at low prices. The Jews from Thuringia, numbering approximately 342 men, women and children, were transported on May 8 or 9, 1942 in ordinary passenger trains from their towns and villages to Weimar. Among them were Jews from cities such as Erfurt, Eisenach, Gera, Jena, Nordhausen and Meinigen. Their roundup took place in broad daylight. Twenty official photographs from Eisenach depict how up to 58 Jews were marched to the railway station through a neighborhood with hand luggage on a sunny morning, watched by bystanders. The photos give an impression of both the scale and haste of the deportation. The train consisted of regular passenger cars and left for Weimar at 11:06 a.m. Prior to the transport, the deportees were brought to assembly sites. These were usually public buildings in the vicinity of the railway station. In Weimar the deportees from Thuringia were interned at the local Gestapo’s headquarters and prison, the Marstall, Weimar’s former stock pen in the east of the city. Laura Hillman (Hannelore Wolf), a teenager at the time who was deported with her family, remembers how armed men guarded the entrance under a sign that read: “men and boys to the left, women and girls to the right”. She describes how they had to open their suitcases and how female guards “rummaged through them to look for valuables. Mama was told to remove her gold wedding band.” Laura Hillman also bears witness to the fact that one Jew was beaten to death by a guard. In Leipzig, the deportees from Saxony were interned at the 32nd elementary school at Yorck Street 32 (today: Erich-Weinert-Street) which served as the city’s main assembly point. The atmosphere at the school must have been oppressive. Up to 132 Jews, among them nine children, who had previously been assembled in the courtyard of Chemnitz’s Federal Academy, were brought to Leipzig by train from Chemnitz and Plauen on May 10, 1942 and taken to the school. Eight Jews from Grimma were brought to the assembly site in Leipzig by a police officer on an early morning train on May 8 where they had to wait for two days until the train’s departure. In Weimar, where the train originated, approximately 513 men, women and children were taken in the early morning hours on May 10 from the assembly point through the town to a waiting train at the cargo station on Ettersburger Street. They were loaded into cattle cars. From Weimar the train went to Leipzig. There, at the Engelsdorf cargo station, around 369 Jews boarded including at least 230 Jews form Leipzig, as well as Jews from towns such as Grimma, Borna, Mittweida, Rosswein and Groitzsch. While it is certain that the train was comprised of freight cars, little is known about the train’s exact route. It seems as though the train’s final stop was Lublin train station. An anonymous witness noted that the deportees arrived in Belzyce on May 12, 1942. One day before their arrival at the ghetto, at least several hundred Jewish men from Belzyce were taken to the Majdanek camp to make space for the new deportees from the Reich. There is further evidence that the Jews from Thuringia and Saxony were taken to Belzyce. Frieda Hofmann, for example, deported from Eisenach, made a request on May 31, 1942, to move to Dukla where her son-in-law was registered for forced labour. However, Laura Hillman, who survived the Shoah with the help of Oskar Schindler, testified that she was first taken to the Lublin ghetto and only after a few days to Belzyce. The conditions in Belzyce were very harsh. People lived in very cramped conditions and hygiene was seriously lacking. As a result, many inhabitants died of hunger or disease. Roza Mitelman, who was interned in Belzyce between March 1941 and 1943 testified to the “most horrific conditions”, in which the Jews deported from Leipzig had to live. Isidor Bernstein, deported from Nordhausen, wrote in a letter on August 12, 1942 from Belzyce that the suitcases sent from his family with clothing hadn’t yet arrived in the ghetto. An anonymous letter from Belzyce, from the beginning of September 1942 gives further evidence of the deported Jews from Weimar, Jena, Erfurt and Gotha. From October 1942 onwards, most of the ghetto inhabitants were murdered in the extermination camps surrounding Belzyce. As far as we know, only three persons survived this deportation from Thuringia and Saxony.