Transport, Train Da 52 from Duesseldorf, Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf), Rhine Province, Germany to Minsk, Ghetto, Belorussia (USSR) on 10/11/1941

We have little information about this transport. Most of its 600 deportees came from Düsseldorf. The tight schedule evidently caused some confusion at the Gestapo offices and for this reason, the names of several Jews who had already been deported to Łódź on October 27, 1941, appeared again on the deportation lists.
The collection point for this transport, as for others, was the Schlachthof, the municipal slaughterhouse, where the deportees were to sleep as well. It was an ideal place to organize the transport due to its proximity to the train station, which had lengthy platforms and was relatively well concealed from the eyes of the local population, and its size. On ordinary days it was used for the slaughter of cattle. The transport left on November 10, 1941, from the freight station in Düsseldorf-Derendorf and reached Minsk on November 15.
Between November 10 and December 16, 1941, seven transports reached Minsk with 6,959 Jews aboard. In the first eight months, one-eighth of the arrivals died of malnutrition, cold, or contagious diseases such as typhoid fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and diabetes. The ghetto was relatively long-lived because the Jews there, many of whom had occupational skills, worked for the war industry. Nevertheless, they were regular victims of murderous operations and ultimately nearly all of them were murdered by gunfire in the pits, gas vans, and in other ways. Some 40,000–60,000 were shot to death at the Maly Trostenets murder site, approximately 12 kilometers northeast of Minsk.