Transport, Train Da 17 from Koblenz, Koblenz (Koblenz), Rhine Province, Germany to Izbica, Krasnystaw, Lublin, Poland on 22/03/1942

On March 4, 1942, the Gestapo office in Düsseldorf planned two transports to Trawniki: one departing from Koblenz-Lützel and the second from the Aachen central railroad station. Indeed, two transports set out from this area. The one described here was the first; the second departed on April 30 or May 3. The deportees on this train had come from Aachen, Düren, Düsseldorf, Köln, and several towns in the Rheinland. Three hundred thirty-seven of them originated in Koblenz; among them, 105 had come from the Bendorf-Sayn psychiatric hospital run by the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (National Association of Jews in Germany). Since December 1940, all Jewish psychiatric patients in Germany were required to be hospitalized here. Jews were also brought in from localities near Koblenz. Those from Brodenbach were delivered in trucks. Later, non-Jewish inhabitants of this village testified how a local policeman named Bothmann had Chased the Jews to the truck and had said to the Jewish butcher Isidor Günther as he took a cigar from him: “Either way, it’s going to be your last cigar, so hand it over already!” The transport in Koblenz itself was managed by members of the Gestapo, evidently with the enlisted assistance of the Jewish community. The evening before the deportation, an elderly couple committed suicide....