The Holocaust logistics, logistics of the greatest systemic murder in human history during the Holocaust. After the start of operation Operation Reinhard the logistics were rather simple. Warsaw Ghetto and Gross action there shows how 375,000 of the Ghetto inmates were murdered in a period of just three months. A train carrying 6,000 - 10,000 Jews has run daily since 22 July from Warsaw to Treblinka. The deportation to death camps was hidden and called Relocation to the East.
The Nazi infrastructure dedicated to Jewish murder at this step included the German national railway, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, and the new technology of murdering with an infamous efficiency of the gas chambers of death camps.
Ghettoization - Railway transport - Killing
The three pictures above are the simplest flow chart representing the Holocaust. Three steps are shown above. The ghettoization, here the process of isolation of Jews in a closed area in the Warszawa - Warszawa Ghetto. In this process all Warsaw Jews and also from the neighborhood of Warsaw were gathered and imprisoned. Railway transport to death centers by boxcars was the second step. The third step was in Treblinka - killing by the suffocation in the gas chambers. There are only few documents in the archives about this Gross Action. There was no single registration prior to the deportation to Treblinka and no registration prior the killing. Just numbers. Numbers of transported and the time table of death trains found in Deutsche Reichsbahn archives. No personal document exists concerning this type of transports. Similar system of three steps logistics existed during the Holocaust of Hungarian Jews two years later, in 1944. There was however one exeception - the process called the selection.
The Holocaust selection process refers to who was chosen for forced labour and who was sent to gas chambers upon arrival of concentration camps such as Auschwitz.During selection the Nazi doctors and commandants would assess age, physicality and skills when deciding who would be forced to work and who would be killed. On average, it is thought that around 20% of prisoners brought to the extermination camps were selected for forced labour. The remaining persons were killed in the gas chambers. In the same way as in mentioned death camp Treblinka they were never registered.
The numbers of forced laborers conscripted by the Nazi regime had steadily grown since the war began and finally came to rely upon slave laborers from all over occupied Europe. Auschwitz was not just the death and concentration camp it was also the area where German industrial enterprises built factories, often with their own subcamps. Usually the Jews were singled out for especially harsh treatment and physically punishing work, and many eventually succumbed to what the Nazis called "annihilation through work."
All forced workers were registered as SS were getting payed for each prisoner used for the slave work.
The numbers of forced laborers conscripted by the Nazi regime had steadily grown since the war began and finally came to rely upon slave laborers from all over occupied Europe. Auschwitz was not just the death and concentration camp it was also the area where German industrial enterprises built factories, often with their own subcamps. Usually the Jews were singled out for especially harsh treatment and physically punishing work, and many eventually succumbed to what the Nazis called "annihilation through work."
All forced workers were registered as SS were getting payed for each prisoner used for the slave work.
As slave workers were registered there are numerous documents related to the common transport of the slave workers between the camps and also the individual documents indicating the transports of the single inmate.
Most of these documents are at the present at Arolsen archive and also other documentation centra.
There are also documents concerning the fate of the inmates after the liberation. Among others DP-2 cards issued in Lübeck by UNRRA at the location of Swedish Transit Hospital there. It is therefore often possible to follow a singel inmates fate as below.
Registration camp I - Registration camp II - Registration camp III - Displaced Person Card
9 300 of the former inmates of Bergen-Belsen camp arrived to Sweden during June - July 1945. They were transported to Sweden in White boat mission. After arrival to Sweden the former inmates of the concentration camps were placed in the Swedish Emergency Hospitals.
Approximately 1000 former inmates came to Stockholm and were located in the Emergency Hospital in Sigtuna and some more severe cases at Epidemic Hospital.
Upon arrival to Sigtuna the patients were registered using the registration number Lübeck from the Swedish Transit Hospital. The registration number was primarly on the Entry card to Sweden (Inreseuppgift) that was organized by dr. Hans Arnoldsson. The number on
Registration camp III - Displaced Person Card - Entry Card - Swedish Medical Cards
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| Ehrenfeldová Sara born 1922. UNRRAs DP-2 card from Lübeck - Swedish Medical Card from Sigtuna. This DP-2 card can be easily found in the Arolsen archives online. Läkarkort - Swedish Medical Card from the emergency hospital in Sigtuna is stored at Swedish National Archives, Marieberg, Stockholm. |
DP-2 card from Lübeck - Swedish Medical Card from Sigtuna do have the same Lübeck number - 483. My research showed that Sara Ehrenfeld was the inmate of several concentration camps, starting from Theresienstadt and ending at Bergen-Belsen where she was liberated on April 15th. After liberation Ehrenfeld was transferred to the Field Hospital in Bergen-Belsen. On June 24-26 she was transported by ambulance train from Bergen-Belsen to the Swedish Transit Hospital. On June 28 she left Lübeck onboard White boat S/S Kastelholm. She arrived to Frihamnen port in Stockholm on July 1st. She was transported directly to the Epidemic Hospital in Stockholm. After two days of intensive care there she was transported to Sigtuna emergency hospital. Her medical card from the Sigtuna Emergency Hospital shows her weight of 28 kg, this almost 4 months after the liberation. She died on August 17th 1945 and is buried in Stockholm.
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Flow chart of Sari Grünberger starting in April 1945 in Bergen -Belsen and ending in January 1946 in Stockholm.
