Transport from Stuttgart, Stuttgart (Stuttgart), Wuerttemberg, Germany to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 01/03/1943

Very little information is available regarding this transport that carried 35 Jews from Southwestern Germany on March 1, 1943. It appears that it was part of a second large deportation from the Reich to Auschwitz, transferring some 1,500 Jews from several towns in Western Germany. The deportees were most likely arrested in connection with the “Fabrikaktion” (Factory Action) that took place at the end of February of that year. On February 20, 1943, the department of Jewish affairs in the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) issued a directive to all the Gestapo headquarters in the Reich entitled, “Guidelines concerning the technical implementation for the evacuation of Jews to the East (KL Auschwitz)”. In contrast to earlier guidelines, even Jews employed in factories crucial to the war effort were now eligible for deportation. In a nationwide operation a week later, the Gestapo began to arrest and deport the remaining Jews enrolled in forced labour. The majority of the arrests were conducted in Berlin, where roughly two thirds of these Jews lived. During the subsequent weeks they were deported to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt in large transports. Jewish spouses in mixed marriages and persons of Jewish ancestry (Geltungsjuden) who were not married to a Jewish spouse were still protected from deportation, even though this guideline was not rigidly followed. Alfred Marx, the Wurttemberg representative of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, noted in 1946 that there were 27 Jews from the provinces of Wurttemberg and Hohenzollern on board this transport. Gestapo officials had arrested the majority of them at their place of work. Many had lived in mixed marriages but because of the death or divorce of their non-Jewish partner, they were also scheduled for deportation. There were also several persons over the age of 70 on the transport....