Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Deportation of Hamburg's Jews
Summary: Accounts of the deportation of the Jews in Germany
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project
Keywords: Hamburg,deportation
X-Web: http://www.nizkor.org/

Archive/File: places/germany/deportations/deport.003
Last-Modified: 1994/10/10

   "Sept.  1, 1939: Germany invades Poland.
   "Sept. 15, 1939: Hamburg's Polish Jews declared "enemy aliens," and
                   arrested, imprisoned for five weeks.
   "Oct.  21, 1939: The Jews are deported. One eyewitness recalls:
   
   "`We are taken in wagons to a wayside depot somewhere off the beaten
   track, where they are loading freight cars.  We are piled into one,
   all of us together.  It is freezing cold and there is no light.  We
   fumble around in the dark.  The car stinks.
 
   "Nobody has been allowed to take anything with him. The few
   belongings we had - the extra pair of shoes, a couple of shirts, a
   spare suit, the few clothes which one is allowed to take out of the
   Reich - have been seized as we left. Even our raincoats which we
   had carefully taken with us to the jail have become forfeit.

   "A clock strickes midnight. It begins to rain. He hear it pelting
   down on the roof of the car. The engine starts up and we are on the
   move. All around us there is a rattle of wheels. We seem to be
   hitched to a freight train.

   "Presently, the movement stops and the train draws up at the tiniest
   and most insignificant wayside halt. We peer out of the window to
   catch a glimpse of what is going on. Trains are steaming in and
   out, laden with armaments. Twoops keep pouring in on motorcycle and
   lorry. The whole of Germany has been turned overnight into a huge
   military camp. Every now and again the guards pass by outside our
   car and try the padlock.

   "Twelve hours in the foul and filthy car. Not even a drop of water
   to drink. The few scraps of food we were able to buy at Hamburg
   with our last couple of marks have long since been exhausted. What
   we had has been divided among the women and children or given to
   the old people. We men have had nothing. For us it has been a real
   Day of Atonement.

   "Suddenly the door of the freight car is opened. The captain of the
   guard pokes his head in and orders us all to get o9ut. We form
   fours on the platform. The chief of the Berlin Gestapo calls the
   roll. One hundred and twenty-two 'pieces of baggage.' 'No one
   dead?' he remarks ironically. 'Wait till they get to Lublin, and
   we'll put them to bed with a shovel.'" (S. Mogilewer, Leipzig
   furrier, as quoted in Gilbert, 26-27)

                           Work Cited

   Gilbert, Martin. Final Journey: The Fate of the Jews in Nazi
   Germany. New York: Mayflower Books, 1979

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