German SS records concerning Holocaust were almost completely destroyed. However, a lot of data concerning transports to death camps survuved destruction in the archives of Deutsche Reichbahn.  |
| Time table for the train used for deportation from the Łuków ghetto. 25 wagons of type G and 2 wagons of type C were used. The transport was supossed to take 4 houres. The longest transport of the Holocaust was that from Greek island Corfu and it took 18 days. When the train got to the camps in Poland and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead. |
The Germans had been planning the dissolution of the Łuków ghetto for the last days of August 1942. Twenty seven cattle wagons were waiting in Łuków in the late August, 1942. However, they left Łuków empty. The death camp in Treblinka could not “accommodate” another transport at that time (besides Jews from Siedlce and Warszawa). The action of "relocation" from Łuków, was, therefore, rescheduled.
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The new “action” in Łuków begun on October 5, 1942. Early morning, the German gendarmerie, backed by the Latvians and Ukrainians, and the blue Polish police, surrounded the ghetto and proceeded to chase the Jews out of their homes into the market square. The proceedings were unusually brutal—it is estimated that in those days, in the streets of Łuków, around five hundred Jewish peoples were killed. Thus, included the patients and personnel of the hospital. This action lasted a few days.
After around five thousand had been gathered, they were hurried into the cattle wagons, waiting to take them to the camp in Treblinka. On October 8, 1942, the Germans lured around two thousand people into the Judenrat office, among them those hiding in town. They were also sent to Treblinka. Left in the Łuków ghetto was only a small group of Jews used for cleaning works in the ghetto, searching for loot or burying the dead. Deutsche Reichbahn was not alone in the buisness of transportation of Jews to concentration- and death camps.
Following railway companies in Europe were cooperating as well in the Final Solution:
- NMBS/SNCB
- Nederlandse Spoorwegen
- SNCF
- CFR, Căile Ferate Române
Herbert PFOCH
Gallitzinstrasse 77/2
1160 Wien
Vienna, 29 June 84
Dear President Brentar:
I have received your letter of 18 June 1984 and in this connection
want to repeat what I already stated by telephone on 24 June of this
year. In several respects it appears that you have reached false
conclusions based on false information.
In the first place, Treblinka was not a "prisoner camp for Poles", but
it was an especially organized Nazi extermination camp, for the
liquidation of hundreds of thousands of Jews from many European
countries.
Secondly, I never have performed "duty" there and for this reason I am
unable to provide any information concerning any member of the camp
guards. On the other hand, it is correct that on 22 and 23 August
1943 at Sielce, Poland, as a member of the German Armed Forces
(Wehrmacht), on route to the Russian front, I witnessed a transport of
Jews en route to Treblinka, who were exposed to atrocities that are
hard to describe. At the time, we protested to a responsible SS
officer who pointed out to us that if we did not disappear at once we
would have an opportunity to see Treblinka from inside.
Ukrainian "auxiliaries" brutally and bestially shot or beat to death
women and children, as well as older people unable to get quickly
enough into the railroad cars. The four enclosed photographs provide
only most inadequate information about the situation at the time and
the atrocities that were committed.
With best regards,
s/ Hubert Pfoch
