Transport, Train Da 28 from Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt a. Main (Wiesbaden), Hesse-Nassau, Germany to Kaunas, Kaunas, Lithuania on 22/11/1941

The deportation on November 22, 1941, from Frankfurt to Kaunas in occupied Lithuania was the third transport to leave the city, just a few days after the second deportation, with over 900 Jews. Jakob Sprenger, Gauleiter (district party leader) of Hesse-Nassau, had set himself the task to make his Gau (the Nazi equivalent to province or state) and especially Frankfurt “judenfrei” (Free of Jews) as quickly as possible. The deportation train had been ordered by the RSHA for November 21, 1941 with Riga as its destination and was registered at the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German national train) under the designation "Da 28". However, due to overcrowding in Riga at that time, the actual destination of this deportation was altered to Kaunas. After the war, the US military government prepared a deportation list based on records found at Frankfurt's police headquarters. This document lists 992 Jews from Frankfurt alone (another copy states 988 deportees). The average age of the deportees was 48; however, many elderly people were also deported, which supports the assumption made by historian Monica Kingreen that dependency on welfare was one criterion for deportation. We know, that SS member and city clerk Ernst Holland, who functioned as the Gestapo overseer of the welfare department and charitable institutions of the Jewish Community in Frankfurt was very eager to deport as many Jews as possible. 59 infants and children up to the age of 10 were on this transport from Frankfurt; probably the youngest was not even eight months old. Bertha Oppenheimer from Frankfurt, aged 69 at the time, had not succeeded in leaving Germany before the Holocaust. In a letter dated November 18, 1941, the last words we would hear from her were those she used to bid farewell to her children in the USA:...