Transport 41, Train Da 227 from Wien, Vienna, Austria to Maly Trostenets, Camp, Belorussia (USSR) on 14/09/1942

Transport No. 41, labeled Da227, departed from Aspangbahnhof on September 14th, 1942, at 7:08 pm and arrived on September 18th at Maly Trostenets. The transport consisted of 1000 Jews, 138 of them were older than 61 years. The average age of the deportees was 43. The train traveled along a route that went through Vienna’s Nordbahnhof, Wolkowysk, Platerowo, Czeremcha, Baranovichi, Koydanovo (Dzerzhinsk), Minsk, Kolodishchi. Fifteen armed uniformed policemen (Schutzpolizei) under the command of First Lieutenant Robert Rill guarded the Jews throughout the trainride. According to timetable number 62, which had been distributed on August 15th, 1942, by the Central Railroad Administration to the train stations at Wolkowysk, Baranovichi, and the freight train stations at Minsk and Kolodishchi, train Da 227 arrived on September 16th at 4:35 pm at the main train station in Wolkowysk The Jewish deportees were transferred to freight cars, while a passenger car was attached for the guards. The train’s engine was replaced and it left the station at 9:25 pm, arriving on Thursday, September 17th, at 4:01 am to the main train station in Baranovichi. After some maintenance work, the train continued on its way at 7:30 am, reaching Koydanovo at 11:42 am. On September 18th at 2:22 am, the train continued from Koydanovo, arriving at the freight train station in Minsk at 3:49 am. In Minsk the locomotive was replaced another time and at 4 am the train continued on its way, reaching Kolodishchi at 4:37 am. Commencing in August 1942, following the roundup and murder of the Jews in the Minsk ghetto and in order to save gasoline (and time), the trains were diverted to a seldom-used sidetrack that led from Kolodishchi to an improvised platform in the vicinity of Maly Trostenets. Members of the security service (SD) rounded up the Jews in a meadow close to the Maly Trostenets camp, where they were quickly robbed of their last remaining belongings. The SD-men conducted a selection in which they chose 20 - 50 young men who were then sent to various kinds of forced labor in the camp. The remaining Jews on this transport were brought directly to open pits in Blagovshchina forest, where they were shot to death by Waffen-SS and Schupo men. The very old and the very young, which had difficulty walking, were loaded into gas vans – which had been introduced into use at Maly Trostenets in June 1942 – and killed by the engine exhausts.