Transport, Train Da 57 from Kassel, Kassel (Kassel), Hesse-Nassau, Germany to Sobibor, Extermination Camp, Poland on 01/06/1942

The train with the number “Da 57” was initially destined for Trawniki, but in a later timetable array (Fahrplanordnung) Izbica was listed as the new destination. The special train (“Sonderzug”) was planned for May 15, 1942 but, as Alfred Gottwaldt notes, an internal memo issued by the Reichsbahn (the German railroad company) states that the train scheduled for that date was canceled (“Ausfall”). Finally the train was scheduled to leave Kassel on June 1, 1942. Because almost all Jews from the administrative district of Kassel had already been deported in December 1941, the historian Monica Kingreen has pointed out that, the RSHA guideline to compile transports of at least 1,000 Jews could not be followed anymore. Hence, the Kassel and Chemnitz Gestapo organized a joint transport ("Koppeltransport") deporting around 1,000 Jews from Hesse and Saxony. The train stopped in Lublin where male Jews were selected for forced labour and transferred to the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp and then continued, presumably without stopping in Izbica, to the Sobibor annihilation camp. The transport that left Kassel on June 1, 1942, was the second of three mass deportations from the district of Kassel. Approximately 509 Jews were deported: 87 Jews came from Kassel city, the other Jews came from various other towns and districts including Hanau, Fulda, Marburg and Eschwege, as well as many smaller places. Approximately 500 additional Jews from the Halle-Merseburg and Chemnitz districts joined this transport when the train passed through Saxony. These Jews included 131 persons from the area of Halle. Among these at least 22 came from the city of Halle itself, as well as smaller groups of Jews from towns such as Bitterfeld, Eisleben, Naumburg, Weissenfels and others....