Transportation
Liquidation and Deportation
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Nazis would order deportations from the ghettos. In some of the large ghettos, 1,000 people per day were loaded up in trains and sent to either a concentration camp or a death camp. To get them to cooperate, the Nazis told the Jews they were being transported to another place for labor. When the Nazis decided to kill the remaining Jews in a ghetto, they would "liquidate" a ghetto by boarding the last Jews in the ghetto on trains. When the Nazis attempted to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto on April 13, 1943, the remaining Jews fought back in what has become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jewish resistance fighters held out against the entire Nazi regime for 28 days -- longer than many European countries had been able to withstand Nazi conquest. |
German railroad officials used freight and passenger cars for deportations. German authorities did not give the Jews food or water for the journey, even when they had to wait for days on railroad spurs for other trains to pass. Packed in sealed freight cars and suffering from overcrowding, they endured intense heat during the summer and freezing temperatures during the winter. Aside from a bucket, there was no sanitary facility. The stench of urine and excrement added to the humiliation and suffering of the Jews. Lacking food and water, many of the Jews died before the trains reached their destinations. Armed police guards accompanied the transports; they had orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Deportation and transportation to camps often took days. Individuals, families and whole communities together with their personal belongings were packed into cattle trucks. They were locked in and transported for days. They had no information. They did not know where they were going, the length of the journey, or what would happen to them when they eventually arrived at their destination. The conditions on the journey were terrible. |
Transportation Conditions David, a Polish Jew aged 13, graphically describes how cramped it was on the train: “There is no room to sit. In order to make room we are forced to stand with our hands above our heads.... Suddenly, the door is slammed shut and sealed. A water bucket is tossed into the car for use as a disposal container for human waste” ("Deportation and Transportation").
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