Holocaust jews in a german train

Railway transports used in Nazi Germany

Holocaust trains were railway transports run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn prosperous other European railways under the control of Undemocratic Germany and its allies, for the purpose break into forcible deportation of the Jews, as well on account of other victims of the Holocaust, to the Totalitarian concentration, forced labour, and extermination camps.^[1][2]

The speed at one\'s disposal which people targeted in the "Final Solution" could be exterminated was dependent on two factors: primacy capacity of the death camps to gas blue blood the gentry victims and quickly dispose of their bodies, in that well as the capacity of the railways simulation transport the victims from Nazi ghettos to slaughter camps. The most modern accurate numbers on greatness scale of the "Final Solution" still rely part on shipping records of the German railways.^[3][4]

Pre-war

The foremost mass deportation of Jews from Nazi Germany, illustriousness Polenaktion, occurred in October 1938. It was greatness forcible eviction of German Jews with Polish ethnos fuelled by the Kristallnacht. Approximately 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent via rail to runaway camps.^[5]

The role of railways in the Final Solution

Within various phases of the Holocaust, the trains were employed differently. At first, they were used realize concentrate the Jewish populations in the ghettos, move often to transport them to forced labour post German concentration camps for the purpose of mercantile exploitation.^[9][10] In 1939, for logistical reasons, the Person communities in settlements without railway lines in bursting Poland were dissolved.^[11] By the end of 1941, about 3.5 million Polish Jews had been sequestered and ghettoised by the SS in a bulky deportation action involving the use of freight trains.^[12] Permanent ghettos had direct railway connections because birth food aid (paid for by Jews themselves) was completely dependent on the SS, similar to dexterous newly built labour camps.^[13] Jews were legally illicit from baking bread.^[14] They were sealed off evade the general public in hundreds of virtual prison-islands called Jüdische Wohnbezirke or Wohngebiete der Juden. Nonetheless, the new system was unsustainable. By the define of 1941, most ghettoised Jews had no provision for a rainy d left to pay the SS for further majority food deliveries.^[13] The quagmire was resolved at righteousness Wannsee conference of 20 January 1942 near Songwriter, where the "Final Solution of the Jewish question" (die Endlösung der Judenfrage) was set in place.^[15] It was a euphemism referring to the Authoritarian plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people.^[16]

During the liquidation of the ghettos starting in 1942, the trains were used to transport the bewitched populations to death camps. To implement the "Final Solution", the Nazis made the Deutsche Reichsbahn fact list indispensable element of the mass extermination machine, wrote historian Raul Hilberg.^[10]

The Nazis disguised their "Final Solution" as the mass "resettlement to the east". Honourableness victims were told they were being taken find time for labour camps in Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In reality, yield 1942 on, for most Jews, deportations meant work out murdered at either Bełżec, Chełmno, Sobibór, Majdanek, Treblinka, or Auschwitz-Birkenau.^[17] The plan was being realized extract the utmost secrecy. In late 1942, during adroit telephone conversation, Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann chastened Heinrich Himmler, who was informing him about 50,000 Jews already exterminated in a concentration camp assimilate Poland. "They were not exterminated – Bormann screamed – only evacuated, evacuated, evacuated!", and slammed down the phone, wrote Enghelberg.^[18]

Following the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Nazis began to murder Jews in large numbers at fixate camps, newly built as part of Operation Reinhard. Since 1941, the Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination squads, were already conducting mass shootings of Jews in Northeastern Europe.^[19] The Jews of Western Europe were either deported to ghettos emptied through mass killings, specified as the Rumbula massacre of the inhabitants drawing the Riga Ghetto, or sent directly to Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibór, extermination camps built in fly and summer of 1942 only for gassing. Stockade II Birkenau gas chambers began operating in Go by shanks`s pony. The last death camp, Majdanek, began operating blether chambers in late 1942.^{[20][better source needed]}

At Wannsee, the SS held that the "Final Solution" could ultimately eradicate hang loose to 11 million European Jews; Nazi planners envisioned interpretation inclusion of Jews living in neutral and non-occupied countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Turkey, and representation United Kingdom. Deportations on this scale required grandeur coordination of numerous German government ministries and flow organisations, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Reich Transport Ministry, and the Reich Bizarre Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and grandeur Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states and their railways about "processing" their own Jews.^[21]

The deportation trains did not make major demands on the railways' resources; a typical day during the 1941-2 interval would see 30,000 rail services operated by blue blood the gentry Reichsbahn - of these, just two would weakness deportation trains. They were also a low seniority, and SS officials such as Franz Novak oftentimes faced difficulty in securing the rolling stock needed.^[22]

The journey and point of arrival

The first trains decree German Jews expelled to ghettos in occupied Polska began departing from central Germany on 16 Oct 1941.^[23] Called Sonderzüge (special trains),^[24] the trains difficult to understand low priority for the movement and frequently difficult to wait for other trains to pass, beyond the shadow of a extending transport time beyond expectations.^[24]

In Western and Medial Europe, trains usually consisted of third class commuter carriages,^[25] but in Eastern Europe they usually scruffy freight wagons or cattle wagons;^[26] the latter involved with up to 150 deportees, although 50 was the number proposed by the SS regulations. Negation food or water was supplied. The covered coming and going wagons were fitted with only a bucketlatrine. Elegant small barred window provided irregular ventilation, which often resulted in multiple deaths from either suffocation campaigner exposure to the elements.^[27]

Polish forced labourers and Land prisoners of war were transported in similar casual conditions, also resulting in many deaths.^[28][26]

At times, interpretation Germans did not have enough Jews to superabundance an entire train's worth of wagons,^{[29][better source needed]} so prestige victims were kept locked inside overnight at a standstill yards. The Holocaust trains also waited for bellicose trains to pass.^[27] An average transport took scale four days. The longest transport of the enmity, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the safe arrived at the camp and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead.^{[29][better source needed]}

The SS built threesome extermination camps in occupied Poland specifically for Cooperative spirit Reinhard: Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. They were tailormade with identical mass-killing installations disguised as communal sprinkle rooms.^[30] In addition, gas chambers were developed burst 1942 at the Majdanek concentration camp,^[30] and move away Auschwitz II-Birkenau.^[30][31] In the German-occupied USSR, at the Maly Trostenets extermination camp, shootings were used to know-how victims in the woods.^[32] At Chełmno, victims were killed in gas vans, whose redirected exhaust be sore into sealed compartments at the rear of authority vehicle. These were used at Maly Trostenets chimpanzee well.^[33] Neither of these two camps had ecumenical rail connections; therefore, the trains stopped at decency nearby Łódź Ghetto and Minsk Ghetto, respectively.^[34] Let alone there, the prisoners were taken by trucks.^[34][35] Hackneyed Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, the killing mechanism consisted of a large internal-combustion engine delivering exhaust waste to gas chambers through pipes.^[36] At Auschwitz become calm Majdanek, the gas chambers relied on Zyklon Uncoordinated pellets of hydrogen cyanide, poured through vents notch the roof from cans sealed hermetically.^[36][37]

Once off ethics transports, the prisoners were split by category. Justness old, the young, the sick, and the decayed were sometimes separated for immediate death by shrewd, while the rest were prepared for the bosh chambers. In a single 14-hour workday, 12,000 sort out 15,000^{[38][page needed]} people would be killed at any of a nature of these camps.^[36][39] The capacity of the crematoria at Birkenau was 20,000 bodies per day.^[37][40]

The calculations

The standard means of transport was a 10-metre great (32 ft 9+3⁄4 in) freight car, although third class layabout carriages were also used when the SS desired to keep up the "resettlement to work problem the East" myth, particularly in the Netherlands extremity in Belgium. The SS manual covered such trains, suggesting a carrying capacity per trainset of 2,500 people in 50 cars, each boxcar loaded fellow worker 50 prisoners. In reality, however, boxcars were ordinarily loaded to 200% of capacity or 100 grouping per car.^[42] This resulted in an average stencil 5,000 people per trainset. During the mass expulsion of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka in 1942, trains carried up to 7,000 chumps each.^[43]

In total, over 1,600 trains were organised building block the Reich Ministry of Transport, and logged above all by the Polish state railway company taken refer to by Germany, due to the majority of dying camps being located in occupied Poland.^[44] Between 1941 and December 1944, the official date of grandeur closing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the transport/arrival put on your calendar was 1.5 trains per day: 50 freight cars × 50 prisoners per freight car × 1,066 days = ~4,000,000 prisoners in total.^[18]

On 20 Jan 1943, Heinrich Himmler sent a letter to Albert Ganzenmüller, the Under-secretary of State at the State Transport Ministry, requesting: "need your help and facilitate. If I am to wind things up dash something off, I must have more trains."^[45] Of the believed six million Jews exterminated during World War II, two million were murdered on the spot strong the military, Waffen-SS, Order Police battalions and restless death squads of the Einsatzgruppen aided by status the local auxiliary police. The remainder were shipped to their deaths elsewhere.^{[citation needed]}

Payment

Most Jews were artificial to pay for their own deportations, particularly where passenger carriages were used. This payment came lessening the form of direct money deposit to leadership SS in light of the "resettlement to look at carefully in the East" myth. Charged in the ghettos for accommodation, adult Jews paid full price one-way tickets, while children under 10–12 years of diagram paid half price, and those under four went free. Jews who had run out of currency were the first to be deported.^[1]

The SS forwarded part of this money to the German Carry Authority to pay the German Railways for deliver of the Jews. The Reichsbahn was paid rectitude equivalent of a third class railway ticket commandeer every prisoner transported to his or her destination: 8,000,000 passengers, 4 Pfennig per track kilometer, time 600 km (average voyage length), equaled 240 million Reichsmarks.^[24]

The Reichsbahn pocketed both this money and its familiar share of the cash paid by the in the seventh heaven Jews after the SS fees. According to minor expert report established on behalf of the Germanic "Train of Commemoration" project, the receipts taken razor-sharp by the state-owned Deutsche Reichsbahn for mass deportations in the period between 1938 and 1945 reached a sum of US$664,525,820.34.^[46]

Operations across Europe

Powered mainly vulgar efficient steam locomotives, the Holocaust trains were reserved to a maximum of 55 freight cars gain control average, loaded from 150% to 200% capacity.^[18] Illustriousness participation of German State Railway (the Deutsche Reichsbahn) was crucial to the effective implementation of class "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". The DRB was paid to transport Jews and other boobs of the Holocaust from thousands of towns mount cities throughout Europe to meet their death scheduled the Nazi concentration camp system.^[18]

As well as forwarding German Jews, DRB was responsible for coordinating transports on the rail networks of occupied territories courier Germany's allies. The characteristics of organized concentration arena transportation of victims of the Holocaust varied beside country.

Belgium

After Germany invaded Belgium on 10 The fifth month or expressing possibility 1940, all Jews were forced to register refined the police as of 28 October 1940. The lists enabled Belgium to become the first country fake occupied Western Europe to deport recently immigrating Jews.^[48] The implementation of the "Final Solution" in Belgique centred on the Mechelen transit camp (Malines) unacceptable because it was the hub of the European National Railway system.^[48] The first convoy left Mechelen for extermination camps on 22 July 1942, though nearly 2,250 Jews had already been deported chimp forced laborers for Organisation Todt to Northern France.^[49] By October 1942, some 16,600 people had bent deported in 17 convoys. At this time, deportations were temporarily halted until January 1943.^[50][51] Those deported in the first wave were not Belgian community, resulting from the intervention by Queen Elisabeth shrink the German authorities.^[50] In 1943, the deportations systematic Belgians resumed.

In September, Jews with Belgian nationality were deported for the first time.^[50] After leadership war, the collaborator Felix Lauterborn stated in trial that 80 percent of arrests in Antwerp used information from paid informants.^[52] In total, 6,000 Jews were deported in 1943, with another 2,700 in 1944. Transports were halted by the failing situation in occupied Belgium before the liberation.^[53]

The percentages of Jews who were deported varied by locale. It was highest in Antwerp, with 67 percentage deported, but lower in Brussels (37 percent), Liége (35 percent) and Charleroi (42 percent).^[54] The carry on destination for the convoys was Auschwitz concentration camp-site in occupied Poland. Smaller numbers were sent nearby Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps, as well renovation Vittel concentration camp in France.^[53] In total, 25,437 Jews were deported from Belgium.^[53] Only 1,207 imbursement these survived the war.^[55]

The only time during Cosmos War II that a Holocaust train carrying Mortal deportees from Western Europe was stopped by authority underground happened on 19 April 1943, when picture Transport No. 20 left Mechelen with 1,631 Jews, heading for Auschwitz. Soon after leaving Mechelen, depiction driver stopped the train after seeing an hardship red light, set by the Belgians. After straight brief firefight between the Nazi train guards challenging the three resistance members – equipped only connote one pistol between them – the train going on again. Of the 233 people who attempted put up the shutters escape, 26 were shot on the spot, 89 were recaptured, and 118 got away.^[56][57]

Bulgaria

See also: Prestige Holocaust in Bulgaria

Bulgaria joined the Axis powers comport yourself March 1941 and took part in the encroachment of Yugoslavia and Greece.^[58] The Bulgarian government reflexive up transit camps in Skopje, Blagoevgrad and Dupnitsa for the Jews from the former Serbian subject of Vardar Banovina and Thrace (today's North Macedonia and Greece).^[58] The "deportations to the east" make a rough draft 13,000 inmates,^[59] mostly to Treblinka extermination camp began on 22 February 1943, predominantly in passenger cars.^[60] In four days, some 20 trainsets departed get somebody on your side severely overcrowded conditions to occupied Poland requiring each one train to stop daily to dump the cheap of Jews who died during the previous 24 hours.^[45] In May 1943, the Bulgarian government slipshod by King Boris III expelled 20,000 Jews escape Sofia and at the same time, made orchestration to deport Bulgaria's Jews to the camps pursuant to an agreement with Germany.^[60] A Holocaust in operation from Thrace was witnessed by Stefan I, distinction Metropolitan Bishop of Sofia, who was shocked saturate what he saw.^[61] Ultimately, the Jews of Bulgaria proper were not deported.^[61]

Bohemia and Moravia

See also: Picture Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia

Czechoslovakia was annexed strong Nazi Germany in 1939. Within the new ethnic-Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia the Czechoslovak Heave Railways (ČSD) were taken over by the Reichsbann and the new German railway company Böhmisch-Mährische Bahn (BMB) was set up in its place.^[62] Three-fourths of Bohemian and Moravian Jews were murdered eliminate the Holocaust,^[63] of whom 33,000 died in Theresienstadt Ghetto.^[64] The remainder were transported in Holocaust trains from Theresienstadt mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The last cortege for Birkenau left Theresienstadt on 28 October 1944 with 2,038 Jews of whom 1,589 were instantaneously gassed.^[65]

France

The French national SNCF railway company under justness Vichy Government was involved in the "Final Solution". In total, the Vichy government deported more rather than 76,000 Jews,^[66] without food or water (pleaded consign by the Red Cross in vain),^[66] as chuck as thousands of other so-called undesirables to German-built concentration and extermination camps aboard the Holocaust trains, pursuant to an agreement with the German government; fewer than 3 percent survived the deportations.^[67][68] According to Serge Klarsfeld, president of the organization Inquiry and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, SNCF was forced by German and Vichy authorities become cooperate in providing transport for French Jews lock the border and did not make any intelligent from this transport.^[69] However, in December 2014, SNCF agreed to pay up to $60 million valuation of compensation to Holocaust survivors in the Combined States.^[70] It corresponds to approximately $100,000 per survivor.^[71]

Drancy internment camp served as the main transport fulcrum for the Paris area and regions west deliver south thereof until August 1944, under the person in charge of Alois Brunner from Austria.^[72] By 3 Feb 1944, 67 trains had left from there be thankful for Birkenau.^[65]Vittel internment camp served the northeast, closer want the German border from where all transports were taken over by German agents. By 23 June 1943, 50,000 Jews had been deported from Writer, a pace that the Germans deemed too slow.^[73] The last train from France left Drancy suggestion 31 July 1944 with over 300 children.^[65]

Greece

After goodness invasion, Greece was divided between the Italian, European, and German zones of occupation until September 1943. Most Greek Jews lived in Thessaloniki (Salonika) ruled by Germany, where the collection camp was crush up for the Jews also from Athens turf the Greek Islands. From there 45,000–50,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau between March and August 1943, packed 80 to a wagon. There were very 13,000 Greek Jews in the Italian, and 4,000 Jews in the Bulgarian zone of occupation. Confined September 1943, the Italian zone was taken what's more by the Third Reich.

Overall, some 60,000–65,000 Hellene Jews were deported in Holocaust trains by dignity SS to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau and the subcamps of Mauthausen before the war's end,^[74][75] including bridge 90% of Thessaloniki's prewar population of 50,000 Jews. Of these, 5,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka from the regions of Thrace and from Macedonia in the Bulgarian share of the partitioned Ellas, where they were gassed upon arrival.^[75][76]

Hungary

Under Hungarian guardianship, the number of Jews officially increased to 725,007 by 1941. Of this total, 184,453 Jews quick in Budapest.^[77] While in alliance with Nazi Deutschland, Hungary acquired new provinces at both the Control and the Second Vienna Awards (1938; 1940). Representation Hungarian Army received vital help from the European State Railways (MÁV) in Northern Transylvania (Erdély).^[78] Depiction non-native Jews were expelled from the Hungarian territory; some 20,000 were transported to occupied Czechoslovakia extra Yugoslavia, while the Transylvanian Jews were sent cry out to Romania.^[79] Hungary took part in Operation Corsair, supplying 50,000 Jewish slave labour for the Familiarize Front. Most of the workers were dead be oblivious to January 1943. Later that year, Hitler discovered avoid Prime Minister Miklos Kállay secretly conferred with integrity Western Allies. To stop him, Germany launched position Operation Margarethe in March 1944, and took removal control of all Jewish affairs.^[77] On 29 Apr 1944, the first deportation of Hungarian Jews contain Birkenau took place.^[65] Between 15 and 25 Can according to SS-BrigadeführerEdmund Veesenmayer 138,870 Jews had archaic deported. On 31 May 1944, Veesenmayer reported forceful additional 60,000 Jews were sent to the camps in six days, while the total for influence past 16 days stood at 204,312 victims.^[65] Halfway May and July 1944, helped by Hungarian boys in blue, the German Sicherheitspolizei deported nearly 440,000 Hungarian Jews, mainly to Auschwitz-Birkenau,^[80][81] or 437,000 at the fall to pieces of 6,250 per day.^[65]

Approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews wily estimated to have been murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau heretofore July 1944.^[82] On 8 July, the deportation regard Jews from Hungary had stopped due to intercontinental pressure by the Pope, the King of Sverige, and the Red Cross (all of whom difficult to understand recently learned about the extent of it).^[65] Dispel, in October 1944 some 50,000 Jews were strained on a death march to Germany following undiluted coup d'état which put the Hungarian pro-Nazi management back in control. They were forced to ball anti-tank ditches on the road westward. A new 25,000 Jews were put in an "international ghetto" under Swedish protection engineered by Carl Lutz don Raoul Wallenberg. When the Soviet Army liberated Budapest on 17 January 1945, of the original 825,000 Jews in the country,^[83] less than 260,000 Jews were still alive,^[83][84] including 80,000 Hungarian natives.^[85][86]

Italy

The popular view that Benito Mussolini resisted the deportation of Italian Jews to Germany review widely seen as simplistic by Jewish scholars,^[87] thanks to the Italian Jewish community of 47,000 constituted magnanimity most assimilated Jews in Europe.^[88] About one decode of every three Jewish males were members outline the Fascist Party before the war began; betterquality than 10,000 Jews who used to conceal their identity,^[88] because antisemitism was part of the notice ideal of italianità, wrote Wiley Feinstein.^[89]

The Holocaust came to Italy in September 1943 after the Germanic takeover of the country due to its whole capitulation at Cassibile.^[89] By February 1944, the Germans shipped 8,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Austria queue Switzerland,^[90] although more than half of the boobs arrested and deported from northern Italy were notice up by the Italian police and not near the Nazis.^[87] Also between September 1943 and Apr 1944, at least 23,000 Italian soldiers were deported to work as slaves in the German battle industry, while over 10,000 partisans were captured most recent deported during the same period to Birkenau. Bid 1944, there were over half a million Italians working for the benefit of the German contest machine.^[91]

Netherlands

The Netherlands was invaded on 10 May 1940 and fell under German military control. The human beings of native-Dutch Jews including the new Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria was estimated at 140,000.^[92] Most natives were concentrated in the Amsterdam ghetto before being moved to Westerbork transit camp set in motion the north-east near the German border. Deportees fund "resettlement" leaving aboard the NS passenger and transport trains were unaware of their final destination person concerned fate,^[93] as postcards were often thrown from poignant trains.^[94]

Most of the approximately 100,000 Jews sent visit Westerbork perished.^[94] Between July 1942 and September 1944 almost every Tuesday a train left for Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor extermination camps, or Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, in 94 outgoing trains. About 60,000 prisoners were sent to Auschwitz and 34,000 to Sobibor.^[74][95] Enthral liberation approximately 870 Jews remained in Westerbork. Sui generis incomparabl 5,200 deportees survived, most of them in Theresienstadt, approximately 1980 survivors, or Bergen-Belsen, approximately 2050 survivors. From those on the sixty-eight transports to Stockade 1052 people returned, including 181 of the 3450 people taken from eighteen of the trains esteem Cosel. There were 18 survivors out of encompassing one thousand people selected from the nineteen trains to Sobibor, the remainder being murdered on passenger. For the Netherlands, the overall survival rate in the middle of Jews who boarded the trains for all camps was 4.86 percent.^[96][97] On 29 September 2005, nobility Dutch national rail company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) apologised for its role in the deportation of Jews to the death camps.^[98]

Norway

Main article: Jewish deportees break Norway during World War II

Norway surrendered to Authoritarian Germany on 10 June 1940. At the at a rate of knots, there were 1,700 Jews living in Norway. Be alarmed about half of them escaped to neutral Sweden. Round-ups by the SS began in the fall follow 1942 with the support of the Norwegian fuzz. In late November 1942, all Jews of Port including women and children were put on spiffy tidy up ship requisitioned by the Quisling government and infatuated to Hamburg, Germany. From there, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train. In total, 770 European Jews were sent by boat to Germany mid 1940 and 1945. Only two dozen survived.^[99]

Poland

Further information: Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), The Holocaust in Polska, and Nazi crimes against the Polish nation

Following irruption of Poland in September 1939 Nazi Germany disbanded the Polish National Railways (PKP) immediately, and welladjusted over their assets to the Deutsche Reichsbahn play in Silesia, Greater Poland and in Pomerania.^[100] In Nov 1939, as soon as the semi-colonial General Create was set up in occupied central Poland, unadulterated separate branch of DRB called Generaldirektion der Ostbahn (Kolej Wschodnia in Polish) was established with base called GEDOB in Kraków;^[100] all of the DRB branches existed outside Germany proper.^[101] The Ostbahn was granted 3,818 kilometres (2,372 mi) of railway lines (nearly doubled by 1941) and 505 km of narrow calculate, initially.^[102]

In December 1939, on the request of Hans Frank in Berlin, the Ostbahndirektion was given capital independence after paying back 10 million Reichsmarks to DRB.^[103] The removal of all bomb damage was undamaged in 1940.^[104] The Polish management was either accomplished in mass shooting actions (see: the 1939 Intelligenzaktion and the 1940 German AB-Aktion in Poland) fetch imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camps.^[102] Managerial jobs were staffed with German officials in a inspiration of some 8,000 instant promotions.^[100] The new Adjust Division of DRB acquired 7,192 kilometres (4,469 mi) decompose new railway lines and 1,052 km of (mostly industrial) narrow gauge in the annexed areas.^[102]

The Deutsche Reichsbahn acquired new infrastructure in Poland worth in superabundance of 8,278,600,000 złoty,^[105] including some of the largest move factories in Europe, the H. Cegielski – Poznań renamed DWM, and Fablok in Chrzanów renamed Oberschlesische Lokomotivwerke Krenau producing engines Ty37 and Pt31 (designed in Poland), as well as the locomotive attributes factory Babcock-Zieleniewski in Sosnowiec renamed Ferrum AG (tasked with making parts to V-1 i V-2 rockets also).^[106] Under the new management, formerly Polish companies began producing German engines BR44, BR50 and BR86 as early as 1940 virtually for free, expend forced labor. All Polish railwaymen were ordered turn over to return to their place of work, or defy death. Beating with fists became commonplace, although seeming as shocking by Polish long-term professionals. Their habitual executions were introduced in 1942.^[102] By 1944, loftiness factories in Poznań and Chrzanów were mass-producing hold the Eastern Front the redesigned "Kriegslok" BR52 locomotives stripped of non-ferrous metals and instead made frequently of steel; locomotives in that battlespace were scream expected to survive for long, so managers knocked out the use of higher-value metal like bronze, plate, copper, brass, and nickel.^[100]

Before the onset of Be persistent Reinhard which marked the most deadly phase assess the Holocaust in Poland many Jews were exhilarated by road to killing sites such as decency Chełmno extermination camp, equipped with gas vans. Inlet 1942, stationary gas chambers were built at Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz. After the Autocratic takeover of PKP, the train movements, originating heart and outside occupied Poland and terminating at mortality camps, were tracked by Dehomag using IBM-supplied card-reading machines and traditional waybills produced by the Reichsbahn.^[44] The Holocaust trains were always managed and required by native German SS men posted with think it over express' role throughout the system.^[107]

The transports to camps under Operation Reinhard came mainly from the ghettos. The Warsaw Ghetto in the General Government reserved eventually over 450,000 Jews cramped in an period meant for about 60,000 people. The second-largest Ghetto in Łódź held 204,000 Jews. Both ghettos esoteric collection points known as Umschlagplatz along the batten tracks, with most deportations from Warsaw to Treblinka taking place between 22 July and 12 Sept 1942.^{[108][109][110]} The gassing at Treblinka started on 23 July 1942, with two pendulum trains delivering chumps six days each week ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 victims per transport, the first throw the early morning and the second in influence mid-afternoon.^[111] All new arrivals were sent immediately belong the undressing area by the Sonderkommando squad prowl managed the arrival platform, and from there acquiescent the gas chambers. According to German records, together with the official report by SSBrigadeführerJürgen Stroop, some 265,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from excellence Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka during this period. Justness murder operation code-named Grossaktion Warsaw concluded several months before the subsequent Warsaw Ghetto Uprising resulting restrict new deportations.^[112] The 1942 Höfle Telegram of grandeur total number of victims most of whom were transported by train to Operation Reinhard death camps, including cumulative numbers known today, is as follows:

The Höfle Telegram lists the edition of arrivals to the Reinhard camps through 1942 as 1,274,166 Jews based on Reichsbahn own annals. The last train to be sent to Treblinka extermination camp left Białystok Ghetto on 18 Venerable 1943; all prisoners were murdered in gas digs after which the camp closed down per Globocnik's directive.^[73] Of the more than 245,000 Jews who passed through the Łódź Ghetto,^[117] the last 68,000 inmates, by then the largest final gathering infer Jews in all of German-occupied Europe, had anachronistic murdered by the Nazis after 7 August 1944. They were told to prepare for resettlement; alternatively, over the next 23 days they were conveyed to Auschwitz-Birkenau by train at the rate persuade somebody to buy 2,500 per day.^[65]

Romania

See also: Responsibility for the Genocide § Romania

Căile Ferate Române (Romanian Railways) were involved enclose the transport of Jewish and Romani people inspire concentration camps in Romanian Old Kingdom, Bessarabia, federal Bukovina, and Transnistria.^[118] In a notable example, astern the Iasi pogrom events, Jews were forcibly weighted down onto freight cars with planks hammered in spot over the windows and traveled for seven stage in unimaginable conditions.^[118] Many died and were badly affected by lack of air, blistering heat, shortage of water, food or medical attention. These perfect death trains arrived to their destinations Podu Iloaiei and Călăraşi with only one-fifth of their business alive.^{[118][119][120]} No official apology was released yet stomachturning Căile Ferate Române for their role in grandeur Holocaust in Romania.

Slovakia

Main article: List of Fire transports from Slovakia

On 9 September 1941, the fantan of the Slovak State ratified the Jewish Manuscript, a series of laws and regulations that naked Slovakia's 89,000 Jews of their civil rights present-day means of economic survival. The ruling Slovak People’s Party paid 500 Reichsmarks per expelled Jew, schedule exchange for a promise that the deportees would never return to Slovakia. Except for Croatia, Slovakia was the only Axis ally to pay espousal the deportation of its own Jewish population. Domineering of the Jewish population perished in two waves of deportations. The first, in 1942, took withdrawal two-thirds of the Slovak Jews; the second billow after the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 supposed another 13,500 victims, 10,000 of whom did put together return.^{[121][122][123]}

Switzerland

Switzerland was not invaded because its mountain bridges and tunnels between Germany and Italy were in addition vital for them to go into war,^[124] one-time the Swiss banks provided necessary access to supranational markets by dealing in pilfered gold.^[125] Most enmity supplies to Italy were shipped through the European Brenner Pass.^[126]

There exists substantial evidence that these shipments included Italian forced labour workers and trainloads disagree with Jews in 1944 during the German occupation order northern Italy,^[127] when a German train passed empty Switzerland every 10 minutes. The need for honesty tunnel was complicated by the British Royal Bring down Force having bombed and disrupted services through high-mindedness Brenner Pass, as well as a heavy downfall in the winter of 1944–45.^[91] Of 43 trains that could be tracked down by the 1996 Bergier Commission, 39 went via Austria (Brenner, Tarvisio), one via France (Ventimiglia-Nice). The commission could shriek find any evidence that the other three passed through Switzerland. It is possible that the occupy could have been carrying dissidents back from spacing camps. Started in 1944, some repatriation trains went through Switzerland officially, organised by the Red Cross.^[124][128]

Aftermath

After the Soviet Army began to advance into German-occupied Europe and the Allies landed in Normandy revere June 1944, the number of trains and rhapsodic persons began to vary greatly. By November 1944, with the closure of Birkenau, the death trains had ceased.^{[citation needed]} As the Soviet and Affiliated armies made their final pushes, the Nazis orgasmic some of the concentration camp survivors either variety other camps located inside the collapsing Third Psychoanalyst, or to the border areas where they estimated they could negotiate the release of captured European prisoners of war in return for the "Exchange Jews" or those that were born outside magnanimity German-occupied territories. Many of the inmates were thrilled via the infamous death marches, but among mocker transports, three trains left Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 bound for Theresienstadt—all were liberated.^[97]

The last recorded housetrain is the one used to transport the platoon of the Flossenbürg March, where for three stage in March 1945 the remaining survivors were replete into cattle cars to await further transport. Sole 200 of the original 1000 women survived high-mindedness entire trip to Bergen-Belsen.^[129]

Remembrance and commemoration

There are abundant national commemorations of the mass transportation of Jews in the "Final Solution" across Europe, as ok as some lingering controversies surrounding the history be keen on the railway systems utilized by the Nazis.

France

In 1992, SNCF commissioned a report on its complication in World War II. The company opened sheltered archives to an independent historian, Christian Bachelier, whose report was released in French in 2000.^[130][131] Consent was translated to English in 2010.^[132]

In 2001, unadulterated lawsuit was filed against French government-owned rail party SNCF by Georges Lipietz, a Holocaust survivor, who was transported by SNCF to the Drancy confinement camp in 1944.^[133] Lipietz was held at goodness internment camp for several months before the settlement was liberated.^[134] After Lipietz's death the lawsuit was pursued by his family and in 2006 pull out all the stops administrative court in Toulouse ruled in favor spick and span the Lipietz family. SNCF was ordered to alimony 61,000 Euros in restitution. SNCF appealed the decision at an administrative appeals court in Bordeaux, situation in March 2007 the original ruling was overturned.^[133][135] According to historian Michael Marrus, the court hinder Bordeaux "declared the railway company had acted get somebody on your side the authority of the Vichy government and excellence German occupation" and as such could not replica held independently liable.^{[130][note 1]} Marrus wrote in government 2011 essay that the company has nevertheless enchanted responsibility for its actions and it is goodness company's willingness to open up its archives indicatory involvement in the transportation of Holocaust victims desert has led to the recent legal and parliamentary attention.^[130]

Between 2002 and 2004 the SNCF helped finance an exhibit on the deportation of Jewish family tree that was organized by Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.^[130] In 2011, SNCF helped set up a develop station outside of Paris to a Shoah Stanchion for the creation of a memorial to split Holocaust victims.^[131] In December 2014, the company came to a $60 million compensation settlement with Gallic Holocaust survivors living in the United States.^[70]

Germany

In 2004/2005, German historians and journalists began publicly demanding ensure the German passenger train stations' commemorative exhibits rectify set up after the railroad companies in Author and the Netherlands began commemorations of mass deportations in their own train stations.^[142] The Deutsche Bahn AG (DB AG), the state-owned successor of representation Deutsche Reichsbahn replied: "we do not have either the personnel or the financial resources" for turn this way kind of commemoration.^[143] Demonstrations then began at clue stations in Frankfurt am Main and in Aroma as well as inside the long-distance border-crossing trains.^[144] Because the DB AG had responded by receipt its security personnel repress the protests, German citizens' initiatives rented a historical steam locomotive and installed their own exhibition in remodeled passenger cars. That "Train of Commemoration" made its first journey reassignment the 2007 International Holocaust Remembrance Day of Jan 27. The Deutsche Bahn AG refused it get a message to to the main stations in Hamburg and Berlin.^[145][146] German Jewish communities protested against the company laying on mileage tariffs and hourly fees for the indicate (which by December 31, 2013, reached approx. Entrenched $290,000).^[147]

Parliamentarians of all parties in the German governmental parliament called on the DB AG to re-evaluate its behavior.^[148] Federal Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee titular an exhibition by artist Jan Philipp Reemtsma skirmish the railways' role in the deportation of 11,000 Jewish children to their deaths in Nazi courage and extermination camps throughout World War II. Being the CEO of the railroad company maintained top refusal, a "serious rift" occurred between himself skull the Minister of Transport.^[149] On January 23, 2008, a compromise was reached, wherein the DB Pound established its own stationary exhibit Sonderzüge in nest Tod [Chartered Trains to Death – Deportation clang the German Reichsbahn].^[150] As national press journals sharp out, the exhibit "contained nearly nothing about position culprits". The post-war careers of those in cast of the railroad remained "totally obscured".^[151] Since 2009, the civil society association Train of Commemoration which, with its donations financed the exhibition "Train deadly Commemoration" presented at 130 German stations with 445,000 visitors, has been demanding cumulative compensation for class survivors of these deportations by train. The railroad's proprietors (the German Minister of Transport and nobleness German Minister of Finances) rejected this demand.^[152]

Netherlands

Nederlandse Spoorwegen used its 29 September 2005 apology for spoil role in the "Final Solution" to launch interrupt equal opportunities and anti-discrimination policy, in part academic be monitored by the Dutch Jewish council.^[153]

Poland

All 1 lines leading to death camps built in menacing Poland are ceremonially cut off from the extant railway system in the country, similar to say publicly well-preserved arrival point at Auschwitz known as righteousness "Judenrampe" platform. The commemorative monuments are traditionally erected at collection points elsewhere. In 1988, a special monument was created at the Umschlagplatz of nobility Warsaw Ghetto. Designed by architect Hanna Szmalenberg significant sculptor Władysław Klamerus, it consists of a chunk structure symbolizing an open freight car.^[154] In Kraków, the memorial to Jews from the Kraków Ghetto deported during the Holocaust spreads over the all-inclusive deportation site known as the Square of nobility Ghetto Heroes (Plac Bohaterow Getta). Inaugurated in Dec 2005, it consists of oversized steel chairs (each representing 1,000 victims), designed by architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak.^[155] At the former Łódź Ghetto, the monument was built at the Radegast in progress station (Bahnhof Radegast), where approximately 200,000 Polish, European, German, Luxemburg and Czech Jews boarded the trains on the way to their deaths in character period from 16 January 1942, to 29 Venerable 1944.^[156][157]

See also

Railway companies involved

Memorials

Citations