Transport, Train Da 36 from Nuernberg, Nürnberg (Nürnberg), Bavaria, Germany to Izbica, Krasnystaw, Lublin, Poland on 24/03/1942

The transport left Nuremberg on March 24, 1942 and arrived on March 27 at the transit ghetto in Izbica, located on the Lublin–Belzec railway line in the General Government (Poland). This was the second of seven deportations of Franconian Jews from Nuremberg to ghettos and extermination camps in the East. At the beginning of March, this deportation train – Sonderzug (special train) "Da 36" – had been reserved by the RSHA from the Reichsbahn destined for Trawniki. However, according to Alfred Gottwaldt, by March 19, the transport's destination had been changed to Izbica (Lubelska), in Lublin County (occupied Poland, Generalgouvernement). The Nuremberg-Fuerth Gestapo, under the command of Dr. Benno Martin and his deputy Dr. Theodor Grafenberger, was in charge of all deportations from Franconia (northern Bavaria, known at the time as Main Franconia). On March 18, Grafenberger summoned a meeting to prepare for the upcoming transport. After the first deportation from Nuremberg in November 1941 to Riga, and the near annihilation of the local Jewish community, the Gestapo, namely Christian Woesch, the right hand of Grafenberger, could no longer assemble the 1,000 deportees required by the RSHA guidelines. As a result, the Wuerzburg Gestapo was obliged to enlist 170 additional Jews from their city and 170 from the administrative districts of Kitzingen, Ochsenfurt and Karlstadt. Their transport to Nuremberg was conducted under Michael Völkl, deputy chief to Ernst Gramowski and head of the Jewish desk at the Wuerzburg Gestapo. Schutzpolizei (Schupo, the municipal police), Landräte (district administrators), and mayors as well as policemen were also involved in the implementation of the transports from these places to Nuremberg. On February 2, the Wuerzburg Gestapo sent a list to the Nuremburg branch totaling 2,006 Jews from several townlets and villages living under their administration. However, not all of them were considered eligible for this deportation and so were not included in the transport. According to the deportation guidelines of the RSHA, which reached the Wuerzburg Gestapo on March 22, persons considered eligible for deportation were all those defined as Jews according to the Nuremberg laws. At this time, Jews who were generally excluded from the transport were those who were married to non-Jewish partners, as well as their children, and Jews who were employed in the German armament industry. Jews over the age of 65, war invalids, or Jews decorated with the Iron Cross would be sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto (Terezin) from June 1942 onwards, and were thus also not yet deported. The general RSHA guidelines recommended that Gestapo branches force the Reich Association of Jews in Germany and local Jewish leaders to assist in preparing the transports and provide names and adresses of Jews who were eligible for transport according to specified criteria. As soon as the Gestapo offices obtained this information, they passed on copies of the deportation list to the local Department for Jewish Affairs. There were approximately 1,000 Jews on board this second transport leaving Nuremburg, the largest city of Franconia, consisting of men, women, elderly people and children from more than 80 towns and villages in Franconia. Bernhard Kolb, executive director of the Jewish community in Nuremberg, recalled in 1946 that in "the middle of March, the second transport was compiled. All persons under 65 years of age who were still in Nuremberg (altogether 426), were assigned. Some who worked for the Jewish community were able to be released from it." Over 400 Jews came from Nuremberg, 224 people from Fuerth, 208 from the districts of Kitzingen and Ochsenfurt (as for example 18 men and women from Wuerzburg, 74 from Bamberg and the surrounding area, and 25 from Gaukönigshöfen) and other places. Even young people on work assignments outside Franconia were ordered back to their hometowns, only to be shipped away together with their parents. For townlets like Obernbreit, Wiesenbronn and Tauberrettersheim only one Jew from each was deported, demonstrating that the Nazi regime aimed to make Franconia “judenfrei” (Jew free). The once lively Jewish communities in northern Bavaria were thus annihilated. In Wuerzburg, the instructions for the transport were handed to the deportees on March 19, together with a declaration of assets and detailed information on the deportation process: Transport numbers were allocated to the deportees that were to be attached to their clothing. For this transport, the Gestapo demanded an extra 80 RM per person instead of the regular 50 RM "deportation fee". The Nazi-authorities had added costs relating to the rental of the Fränkischer Hof inn in Kitzingen which was used as the assembly site and which sent on March 25 an invoice for 297 RM to the Wuerzburg Gestapo for rent, light, and cleaning, as well as a further amount which the mayor of Mainstockheim had invoiced to the Gestapo for the transport of 27 Jewish inhabitants from his municipality to Kitzingen. An inventory of personal belongings which the deportees handed in together with declaration of assets (ratified by the Gestapo on March 30) illustrates that at that time the Jews had no valuables left, aside from razors, watches, and wedding rings. Torah scrolls were handed over to the Wuerzburg Staatsarchiv (state archives), which were integrated into its stock. All Jews deported from Germany were automatically subject to expropriation. They were requested to hand over their apartment keys to the authorities after the payment of all outstanding taxes. The Gestapo ransacked their apartments and luggage, and confiscated all valuables. Then the apartments were sealed. The local tax offices were involved in the subsequent exploitation of Jewish property. There is documentation relating to this transport that the tax office in Kitzingen, which also collected the income tax cards of the deportees, purchased a house which had belonged to one of the deportees. The Wuerzburg Gestapo passed the details of the procedure to Kitzingen. Although this was the only transport of Franconian Jews which was not assembled in Wuerzburg but in Kitzingen, it was organized similarly to the first transport from Nuremburg: the Jews from the counties of Kitzingen, Ochsenfurt, and Karlstadt had to register for deportation at the Fränkischer Hof inn located in the center of town on March 21, between 13:00 and 16:00 p.m. Unlike the other transports, this time the Wuerzburg Gestapo did not use the SS to assemble the deportees, but rather the local Gendarmerie which had been notified and instructed by the Landrat of Kitzingen. At 11:30 a.m. the deportees were interned at the site which was guarded by Schupo. The Jews from Wuerzburg were transported there by truck. Nine male and four female Gestapo employees body-searched the men and women separately, and ransacked their luggage. Subsequently, they were locked in a hall where they had to sleep on the floor, guarded by SS soldiers. Before entering the room, the identification cards of the deportees were stamped with "evacuated on March 24, 1942 to Lublin-Trawniki" ("evakuiert am 24.3.1942 nach Lublin-Trawniki"). For three days the Jews were caged at the Fränkischer Hof until March 24 when they were marched in broad daylight through the town to the train station. They were then taken by train to Nuremberg from where the final deportation train left the same day. An anonymous non-Jewish woman from Kitzingen watched the deportation and told historian Michael Schneeberger in the 1980s: "1942, it was probably spring ‘42, I came from Moltekstrasse back to town. I saw them coming towards me. On that day the Jews from Kitzingen were deported to the East. I remember it like yesterday. [...] They came on Bahnhofstrasse and I was standing at the roadside [...]." The actual fate of the deported Jews seems to have been known to non-Jews, as the diary-entry of a craftsman from Fuerth shows (March 21, 1942): "Tomorrow morning the rest of the Jews in Fuerth will be transported [...]. Occurring rumours, which truth cannot be doubted, report that thousands of Jewish men, women and children were and will be murdered in Poland." A comprehensive photo series of this deportation was also found amongst the exceptionally preserved documents collated by the Wuerzburg Gestapo. Although it was strictly forbidden to take photos of the deportations, Benno Martin authorized the local Gestapo to document it. The photographer Hermann Otto who had already documented the previous transport was engaged for the task. The Gestapo arranged the propaganda photos in a deportation album. The photos show the Jews from the scornful perspective of the perpetrators and give an insight to the transport from Kitzingen: how the Jews were searched at the assembly site, how they were marched through town watched by bystanders carrying their hand luggage and bearing their transport number, sometimes a yellow star attached to their clothing, how they boarded the passenger cars, and how their luggage was loaded. As the main assembly point and departure station for this transport were both located in Nuremberg, the Jews from all over Franconia were brought there. However, some of the deportees were not assembled in Kitzingen but were concentrated in other townlets like Bamberg, and were brought from there to Nuremberg by truck. Prior to the transport, all the deportees were concentrated at Nuremberg's Langwasser camp, in the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds). They and their luggage were searched again. The SS insulted and abused the trapped Jews and stole any belongings that remained. The female deportees were searched by cleaning ladies from the police headquarters who were no less violent than their male counterparts. The assembly site was closed to the public. As in the case of the first transport that departed from Nuremberg and the following to come, it is highly likely that also this time it was the NSDAP member, camera man, and owner of the local "Noris Theater", Richard Nickel who filmed the deportees in the camp under the title "Exodus of the children of Israel from Franconia". Although the leadership of the Nuremberg Gestapo watched the film, it is now lost. The Nazis held an evening where scenes of the film from the first deportation were shown for amusement. On March 24, the Jews were marched for one kilometer from the Langwasser camp to Bahnhof Märzfeld where the deportation train departed. The deportees travelled in sealed cars for 3 days. Before they arrived at Izbica on March 27, they stopped in Lublin where mostly male deportees (we are unable to determine how many) were selected for forced labour at the Majdanek camp. In Izbica the local Jews who had been living there had been murdered to make space for the arriving deportees from Germany and for Jews from other parts of Poland. It is likely that the Nazi authorities took the food from the deportees in Lublin as it had been carried in a separate train car, and that the Jews arrived with literally nothing in Izbica, which was an overcrowded place, lacking basic sanitation and living conditions. On April 23 a letter from Hugo Kolb reached Nuremberg in which he described the situation in the transit ghetto which he, his family, and the other Jews from Franconia faced: "[…] generally neglected, everything is lacking, except rats, mice, flees and bugs. No sewage infrastructure; in the alleys the dirt is knee-deep. Most of all food is lacking [...] The luggage brought with us has not been handed over […] People who do not work have been deprived of an additional 50 Grams from the small daily bread ration." On March 29, the Jewish council in Izbica sent a cry for help to the community in Wuerzburg: " A further 2,000 Jews, this time mostly from Wuerzburg, Kitzingen, Nuremberg, Fürth, Aachen, Düren and Koblenz, have arrived here [...] We urgently need a means of livelihood for those who are not able to work – mostly sick and elderly women and men – and this is why we ask to kindly send us a large amount of money as soon as possible. We also ask you to help with provisions that we can receive on a regular basis such as clothing and food." Although the Wuerzburg Gestapo had taken away over 500 postcards and stamps from the Jews in Kitzingen, a few deportees managed to write postcards from Izbica to their hometowns. These cards stating that they were healthy, had obtained work, and needed money and food, seem rather stereotypic, which is probably due to censorship. Nevertheless, these lines are the last signs of life from the destination of this transport. On April 13, 1942 the Gestapo acknowledged that these cards had been sent, and that a request to halt this activity had been forwarded to the RSHA. Izbica was not the last stop for most of these deportees. Shortly after the Jews from Franconia had reached Izbica most of them were shipped further to Krasniczyn and to the extermination camps in the General Government. No Jew deported on this second transport from Franconia survived.