Transport, Train Da 49 from Wuerzburg, Würzburg (Mainfranken), Bavaria, Germany to Krasnystaw, Krasnystaw, Lublin, Poland on 25/04/1942

The third transport from Franconia (northern Bavaria, known at the time as Main Franconia) left Wuerzburg and Nuremberg on April 25, 1942, and, according to historians David Silberklang and Alfred Gottwaldt, arrived in Krasnystaw in the Lublin district on April 28. The RSHA had ordered the Sonderzug (special train) “Da 49” ordered from the Reichsbahn (German Railroad Company) for Nuremberg-Trawniki, but redirected to the Wuerzburg-Izbica route. As early as on March 18, 1942, at a meeting held to plan the second deportation from Franconia scheduled for March 25, 1942, Dr. Theodor Grafenberger head of the Gestapo’s Jewish Desk and deputy to the head of the Gestapo Nuremberg-Fuerth, Dr. Benno Martin, announced that another transport with 1,000 Jews would leave Wuerzburg within the following two weeks. Christian Woesch, Grafenberger’s right-hand man at Nuremberg’s Jewish Desk, was to compile the list of local deportees, but the overall organization of this transport was to be in the hands of the Wuerzburg Gestapo, under the supervision of Michael Völkl, head of the Jewish desk and deputy chief to Ernst Gramowski. By March 24, the day the second transport departed, the staff of the Jewish community’s old age home in Wuerzburg, Bibrastreet 6, knew that there would be a third deportation within a short time that would include from 33 to 35 inmates, as Karl Sichel from the home asked the mayor of Wuerzburg for 40 kg of sausage, which was more than the regular weekly ration, in advance for the journey. On March 25, the Gestapo Wuerzburg asked the Gestapo Frankfurt/Main to send a young Jewish women living in Wiesbaden back to her home town, Kleinsteinach, so that she could be deported with her parents and that was done. This kind of request was not that unusual. However, the same day, the Gestapo Berlin was asked to arrange for the Siemens-Schuckert plants to release four teenagers from Wuerzburg who were supposed to be deported with their parents, and this time the answer from Berlin, was negative: the employment office had not agreed and those young people would be included in a later transport from Berlin. Another woman and her daughter from Bad Kissingen were released early from the women’s prison Rothenberg/Starnberg so that they could be included in this transport from Wuerzburg. The Wurzburg Gestapo specified the deportation guidelines of the RSHA and demanded 60 RM from each deportee, a sum that was raised to 80 RM prior to the departure. The Gestapo also listed the items that the people would be allowed to include in their luggage of 50 kg, among which were work clothes to disguise the deportation as a work assignment. The Gestapo also distributed asset declarations to be handed to the deportees, who were given transport numbers to replace their civic identities and they were told to affix these numbers to their clothing and luggage. All Jews deported from Germany were automatically subject to expropriation. They were requested to hand over their apartment keys to the Nazi-authorities after they had paid all outstanding taxes. The Gestapo searched their apartments and luggage, and confiscated all valuables. Subsequently the Gestapo sealed the deportees’ apartments. The deportees were also forced to sign a declaration authorizing the transfer of their property to the State. The Gestapo instructed the bailiff, Hock, from the Wuerzburg district court to serve 24 stateless deportees with documents declaring that their property was forfeited to the German state. The deportees’ assets were handed over to the local finance offices, which passed them on to Nazi institutions or sold them at public auction. According to the deportation guidelines, persons subject to deportation were all those whom the Nuremberg laws defined as Jews. On March 27, the Wuerzburg Gestapo informed various district administrators (Landräte) in the Franconia region about Jews who were not to be included in this transport: Jews married to non-Jewish partners and their children; foreign Jews (except for stateless individuals or those with former Polish and Luxemburg citizenship); Jews who were employed in the German armament industry; and Jews over the age of 65 (in exceptional cases up to 67). We know from some Jews from the townlet of Bad Kissingen that individuals belonging to the last group were sometimes transferred to a Jewish old age home in Wuerzburg, from where they were later sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, near Prague. The employment office in Aschaffenburg, which initially had asked the Gestapo not to transport some of the Jews employed through its offices, declared on April 7 that all Jews within their area of responsibility would be deported. After the first two deportations from Franconia and the near annihilation of the local Jewish communities, the region was ‘combed through,’ as historian Hans Günther Adler described it, in accordance with the language of the Wannsee Conference. Thus, the bureaucratic organization of this deportation was extraordinarily painstaking. By April 10, the final date of the transport had not yet been fixed, so the Gestapo Wuerzburg established a special four-day commission, consisting of 30 men and 8 women, among them SS, Gestapo, and police. The transfer of Jews from all over Franconia to Wuerzburg, where the main assembly point was located, was to be carried out according to a carefully detailed plan. The assembly point for this transport was set up in the Platz’scher Garten, an Italian-style villa, which was near the old city and housed an elegant restaurant. At the entrance to the premises there was a sign that read “Evakuierungsstelle der Geheimen Staatspolizei” (“Gestapo evacuation point”). On April 12, the departure date for the transport was set for April 24, and the Gestapo sent the mayors and administrators of nineteen county districts and three town districts detailed instructions regarding the exact date and time that ‘their’ Jews would be sent to Wuerzburg between April 22 and 24. The arrivals were closely synchronized. On April 22, for example, the transfers were to start with 111 Jews from Schweinfurt County (81) and town (30), scheduled to arrive at the Platz’scher Garten at 8:30 a.m. and were to end with the arrival of 59 Jews from the Neustadt/Saale county district between 6 and 7 p.m. The instructions then went on to further detail how many Jews from which places in those counties were among the deportees and if they were to be sent to Wuerzburg by train, bus, or car. Finally the Gestapo noted how many pieces of luggage were to be expected to arrive at the assembly point from each townlet. The Jews received very short notice regarding their coming transport. The people from Schweinfurt, for example, were informed only on April 20, which meant that they had only two days to prepare to leave their homes forever. Prior to their transport to Wuerzburg, the Jews from Bad Neustadt/Saale were assembled in the market place in town. After the war an official from the district administrator’s office recalled how he had seen the Jews “in poor clothing, undernourished and frightened [...].” The local NSDAP photographed the Jews before they boarded the train to Wuerzburg. Shortly after the local district administrator had witnessed the deportees’ march to the train station, he noted: “The removal of the Jews took place without incident. Some citizens took umbrage because a jeering crowd of school children accompanied the Jews to the train station, where they continued with their screaming until the departure.” After the Jews had left Bad Neustadt/Saale, enlargements of some of the photos that had been taken were hung in the showcase of the Main Franconian newspaper "Mainfränkische Zeitung". On April 21, one day before the first of the expected arrivals from the various Franconian towns and townlets at Wuerzburg’s assembly site, the Gestapo Wuerzburg assigned several of its members and some party activists to ‘stations’ at which the Jews’ last remaining possessions were confiscated. How well the non-Jewish citizens were informed about the expropriation and deportation is apparent from the case of Ernst Popp from Wuerzburg, who had asked the Gestapo as early as on April 23 for a backpack from the “evacuated.” Völkl from the Wuerzburg Gestapo was at the assembly point for the entire period, overseeing the procedure. The Jews were not allowed to leave the Platz’scher Garten, which was guarded by SS soldiers and Schupo (Schutzpolizei, uniformed police force) day and night, and fifteen women and five men from the Jewish community were forced to clean the premises. Despite the detailed deportation plan, there had been delays, and the Jews were caught at the assembly site until April 25, which then was cleaned by 15 women and 5 men of the Jewish community – the day after the deportation the singer Wilhelm Strienz appeared on stage at the villa. On May 9, Völkl compiled the invoices for services rendered for the deportation, which included the costs for darkening the Platz’scher Garten (master decorator Grüner), the rent for the use of the premises and the cost of the electricity needed for a floodlight (Wuerzburg public utility company). According to the Gestapo’s deportation list, 852 Jews from more than 90 Franconian towns, townlets, and villages were assembled in Wuerzburg, including 23 women from Nuremberg who had not been included in an earlier transport. Among the deportees were whole families including young children, some not even a year old. Jews with physical disability that had been attested to by a public health officer were nevertheless deported – the Gestapo and not the doctors had the decision-making authority. On April 14, the Gestapo had noted that all the Jews from the townlets Ober- and Unteraltertheim would be “evacuated to the East” with this transport, in answer to the concern of the Gendarmerie Oberaltertheim, which just a few days after the first transport from Franconia on December 30, 1941, had asked the Gestapo to take all the Jews away. In townlets such as Zeil, Forchheim, and Hirschaid there was only one Jew to be deported, a clear indication that the Nazi regime was determined to make Franconia “judenfrei” ("Free of Jews"). The once vibrant Jewish communities in northern Bavaria were thus annihilated. On April 25, the Jewish deportees were marched from the Platz’scher Garten to the Aumuehle cargo depot. The Gestapo had hired two furniture trucks to transport the Jews’ suitcases and the elderly and infirm deportees to the train station. Young people from the Jewish community had to cart the luggage in wheelbarrows and load it onto the trucks. Walter Fechenbech, one of the few survivors from Wuerzburg, who was deported in a later transport, was among them. A comprehensive series of photo of this deportation was found among the documents collected and preserved by the Wuerzburg Gestapo. Although it was strictly forbidden to take pictures of the deportations, Benno Martin authorized the local Gestapo to document it. The photographer, Hermann Otto, who had already documented the previous two transports, was engaged for the task. However, the actual director might have been the NSDAP-member, camera man, and owner of the Nuremberg “Noris-theatre,” Richard Nickel, who filmed this transport as he had the earlier ones; his camera tripod can be seen in some of the shots from Wuerzburg. The Gestapo arranged the propaganda photos in a deportation album, some of them with the handwritten comment “Exodus of the children of Israel from beautiful Wuerzburg.” The photos show the Jews from the scornful perspective of the perpetrators and provide a visual record of the transport from Wuerzburg: from the arrival of the Jews at the Platz’scher Garten through their forced march through the town to the Aumuehle cargo depot, guarded by armed police and watched by bystanders, until their luggage was loaded and they boarded the train. The train with the 852 Jews left the cargo station on April 25, at 3:20 p.m. It stopped in Bamberg, where another 103 boarded, among them Jews from Nuremberg and Fuerth who had been taken in a police car to Bamberg, accompanied by the Gestapo member Keinz, and assembled until departure at the “Jew house” “Weisse Taube” (“White Dove”). Bernhard Kolb, executive director of the Nuremburg Jewish community, had to accompany the Jews from Nuremberg to Bamberg, where he helped them on-site, among other things by organizing a truck for their luggage. In a letter to Yad Vashem dated September 1, 1960, he described his arrival in Bamberg: “I felt immediately that a different wind was blowing here and that my presence, despite my papers from Nuremberg, was not welcome. They did not want any witnesses. [...] The Bamberg Gestapo [...] wanted to prove their unbridled Nazi spirit and was chasing the poor people through the garden. The accommodation overnight, in the old dining hall, was in no way sufficient for the number of deportees, so that the majority probably had to spend the night outside, maybe in the rain. The Gestapo’s excitement turned to anger when the body searches yielded only 7 pennies [...].” Kolb was taken into custody by the Bamberg Gestapo, but was later released in Nuremberg. In the same letter he also wrote: “From this transport only one thing is known to me: there were no survivors.” Altogether there were 955 Jews on the train “Da 49” on the way to the General Gouvernement. On board were also staff members of the Jewish community: "Ordner" (Jews who were forced to help keep order on the train), two caregivers for the infants and children, eleven nurses, and one doctor, who had been a veterinarian before the war. There are no testimonies describing the journey. However, what is documented is the exact route of the train, owing to the dutiful report of Oswald Gundelach, Gestapo Wuerzburg, who was head of the transport and accompanied the train. After Wuerzburg and Bamberg, the train passed through Saalfeld; on April 26, it travelled through Żagań (Sagan), Głogów (Glogau), passing into the Reichsgau Warthland, Leszno, Kalisz, Zduńska Wola, and Pabianice; on April 27, Tomaszów Mazowieck, Skarzysko-Kamienna, Radom, and Dęblin. On April 28, it stopped at Lublin between 2:30 and 5 a.m. Here, probably primarily male deportees — we do not know how many — were selected for forced labour at the Majdanek concentration camp. The train then passed Rejowiec and arrived at the Krasnystaw station at 8:45 a.m. At 7:20 p.m. on April 25 Grafenberger telegraphed the RSHA, for the attention of Eichmann, reporting the smooth departure of the train in Wuerzburg. Gundelach handed the deportees over to the Lublin Gestapo and reported: “The transport has been handed over completely; there were no incidents; no police intervention was necessary.” Historians Dieter Pohl and Herbert Schott have suggested that from Krasnystaw, the Jews might have been sent first to Krasniczyn, a townlet in Krasnystaw County that had been turned into a transit station to the “Aktion Reinhard” (“Operation Reinhard”) camps. In July 1942, SS soldiers and Ukrainian auxiliaries sent some 2,000 Jews from Krasniczyn to the Belzec extermination camp, and the Franconian Jews were probably among them. On June 12, 1942, Grafenberger wrote to Gramowski, thanking him for his cooperation in the joint operation, which, he wrote, had encouraged comradeship, and noting that he would remember it as eventful and satisfying. We do not know of any survivors from this transport.