Transport from Wien, Vienna, Austria to Nisko, Nisko, Lwow, Poland on 26/10/1939

The first transport from Vienna to Nisko departed from the Aspangbahnhof on October 20, 1939; it was followed six days later, on October 26, by a second transport. This group of deportees consisted of 665 Jewish men (11 of them older than 61 years) that had been declared “fit for work”. The average age of the deportees was 47. Most of them were skilled construction workers. The group of deportees included Jewish emigrants to Palestine, whose departure from Vienna had been delayed; a group of Young Maccabi members who had planned to emigrate to Bolivia, Jews released from the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps on the condition that they emigrate within a defined period as well as some stateless Jews. Every deportee was required to pay five Reichsmark to cover the travel expenses. In analogy to the preceding transport, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration ordered the Jewish community to supply the deportees with tools and food for a four-week period and to provide ten physicians, equipped with appropriate supplies and equipment, as well as ten people with "organizational skills”. Each deportee was allowed to take 300 Reichsmark and personal effects to a weight of up to 50 kg. The train travelled through Jaroslaw, Katowice, Tarnow, Krakow and Ostrava. This group of deportees received the same treatment as that of the previous transport. On arrival at their destination, the deportees were forced by their German guards to march for five hours until they reached a swampy area near the village of Zarzecze and an encampment of huts still under construction. Forty-eight of the deportees were chosen to remain in the camp. Of the two transports that left Vienna, only 198 Jews remained in Nisko; the others were led under threat of death toward the San, in the vicinity of the then-Soviet border. From there they were forced to continue marching across the border, where they were warned never to return or they would be shot. Many of the Jews who crossed the Soviet border were subsequently sent by the NKVD to Soviet forced labor camps in Siberia. An additional transport, which would have included families and was planned for October 30, 1939, was canceled. Deportations to Nisko ceased shortly afterwards, for several reasons. First, the Wehrmacht needed the railroads for transporting troops from Poland to the Western front. Second, providing housing and employment for the ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche), that were supposed to settle in upper Eastern Silesia, Vienna and the protectorate, turned out to be more difficult than expected. As a result, the focus of resettlement shifted further to the north, to areas like the Wartheland and Western Prussia....