Transfers and Evacuations, Deportees of Convoy 76

Transfers and Evacuations : A Case Study of the Deportees of Convoy 76 Interned at Birkenau [1]

By Chantal Dossin

The evacuation of the women of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp presents several distinctive characteristics which are revealed by the survivors’ testimonies [2]. This study of the fate of the women of Convoy 76 interned at Birkenau on July 4, 1944, illuminates the conditions of their evacuation. Their evacuation was conducted in multiple stages, which differentiates it from the evacuation of the men. Chantal Dossin.

The evacuation of the women of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp has distinctive characteristics that are revealed by the survivors’ testimonies, as well as by the files of the BAVCC [3].

Arrival

Let us remember how the arrival of these women at the ramp of Birkenau on July 4, 1944, occurred. Of the 502 women of this convoy that left Drancy [4] on June 30, 1944, 279 were gassed upon their arrival ; among them, probably 48 were women aged 22 to 44 with their young children, and for three among them, their babies [5]. Some of the 279 were also grandmothers arrested with their grandchildren. As such, the percentage of women murdered upon arrival is proportionally much higher than that of the men (56% of the women compared to less than half of the men).

The works of Serge Klarsfeld [6] inform us that 223 women entered the Birkenau camp, into the section known as the women’s camp, after having undergone the trials of the “selection” and having escaped the gas chambers. They received the serial numbers A-8508 to A-8730 [7] (see the list at the end of the document, p.20).

The study of the individual files conserved in the archives of the BAVCC [8] in Caen teaches us a lot about the fates of these women after their arrival at the camp.

The frailest died shortly after the arrival of the convoy. This was the case for Vida Furman, 41 years old, deceased July 15 ; for Edmée Hirsch, 37 years old, deceased August 31 ; for Hélène Duizend, 53 years old, deceased in August ; and for Julie Dennery, 16 years old, deceased in October.

The women who survived confirm these deaths :

“Mrs. Hélène Duizend, 53 years old, arrived by convoy at the camp on June 1, 1944 [9]. During August 1944, I found myself in the same Revier [10] as Mrs. Duizend and I learned shortly after leaving the Revier that she had succumbed to a violent lung congestion which she had caught during my stay in the Revier. The only female French doctor present at the time in the Revier was Myriam David. Paris, October 6, 1946 [11].”

The dates of death of 10 of these women have been found. For 13 other missing women, we know from the archives of the Auschwitz Museum [12] that they entered the HKB or Haftlingskrankenbau— that is, the infirmary of Birkenau— between September and December of 1944. It is thus possible that they died in the camp before its evacuation. It is likely that around thirty women died in the camp before January 18, 1945.

Transfers of deportees from Birkenau before the death marches : September 1944 to January 1945

Many the women of Convoy 76 left the Birkenau camp between the end of August and the month of December 1944, up until January 1945. These dates were specified by 60 women of Convoy 76 in the reports that they created upon their return [13].

The vast majority of these women deported before the death marches were very young. Thirty-seven out of 60 were between 15 and 30 years old [14]. Only three women deported with their daughters were older than 40. This confirms that they were evacuated to serve as forced labor, since the camps were like work machines during the last year of the war. These detainees were probably used as much as their physical state would allow. Aptitude for work became the criteria of life or death. Their departure was a part of the “Summer–Autumn 1944 transfer of tens of thousands of Jews towards the work camps of the Reich that, in several months, resulted in a significant reduction of the number of people interned at Auschwitz. In total, some 65,000 detainees of the three principal Auschwitz camps were evacuated.” [15] Several of these young women or young girls describe their work in the factories situated in or proximate to the camps to which they were sent.

Sarah Grinsnir, 22 years old in 1944, confirmed : In the autumn, a war factory in Langenbielau [16] on the Polish border, which relied on the Gross Rosen camp, asked for thirty women from Birkenau. The Blockowa [17] took those who signed up. Sarah asked herself, “Which is better ? Leaving to work or staying ?” Sarah finally signed up, but Caroline, her sister, was not on the list. Consequently, she went to see the Block commander and pleaded with her to add her sister’s name. “We were always together for everything. I would not have left without her.” The Block commander accepted, perhaps made more indulgent in the hour of defeat. “Thirty of us left in open cattle cars.” The two sisters worked for six months alongside Polish workers in the Langenbielau factory that manufactured parts for German airplanes.

Marcelle Roth, 23 years old in 1944, also stated : “After about 2 months, a group of women and I were sent to a location near Leipzig, in one of the Kommandos attached to the vast industrial complex of Hasag-Hugo-Schneider armaments factories.” [18]

Equally surprising, of these 60 women [deported before the death marches], 58 were still alive in 1945. Admittedly, they were young. Moreover, they did not spend the winter in the Birkenau death camp, and above all, they did not undergo the terribly fatal marches of January 1945, in the dead of the Polish winter.

As such, Sarah Grinsnir said : “Considering that I was exhausted at the time, this march would have been fatal for me. The system of rule at this new camp permitted us, however, to ‘recover’ until the surrender of Germany in 1945.” [19]

Or Henriette Cohen : “At the approach of the Soviets in January 1945, I was luckily sent by train to Bergen-Belsen [20], which allowed me to escape the death march.”

According to their testimonies, they were sent by train or by truck to concentration camps situated further west, in Germany, in Poland, or on the border with Czechoslovakia, either in small groups of 20, sent to small Kommandos (Langenbielau or Plattnitz, Kommandos of Gross-Rosen) or in convoys of several hundred towards larger camps (Bergen-Belsen or Ravensbrück).

Rachel Meyokas and a group of young girls testified :

“At the beginning of 1945, Doctor Mengele [21] came to the showers to select the strongest prisoners. A young woman was called forward. I joined her. We left by truck. After a long journey that lasted several days with my friends Rosette Meltzer and Renée Eskenazi, we arrived in Flossenbürg, in Germany.”

Similarly, Renée Eskenazi said :

“In November, we left in cattle cars to work in factories. We were optimistic about our chances for survival, because we were leaving a death camp, and we would be safe in factories. However, the trip was difficult because we were quite weak. The journey lasted three to four days. There were sick prisoners and deaths due to the overcrowded conditions in the cattle cars and due to dysentery [22]. We arrived in Flossenbürg, in Bavaria.”

New camps at the end of the “journey”

The testimonies of detainees moved in the Autumn of 1944 from Birkenau to these new camps generally mention daily life in the camps and the work that the women conducted. The camps and the work Kommandos were located near factories dedicated to sorting or assembling military equipment. These factories belonged to large German firms such as Hasag, Siemens, Junkers. The innumerable Kommandos dependent upon the large concentration camps of Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, and Gross-Rosen were Malchow, Raguhn, Hasag, Zschoppau, Lippstadt, Parchnitz, Langenbielau, and many others still.

The conditions in these camps seemed less unbearable than those in Birkenau. At the beginning of November, Renée Eskenazi arrived in Flossenbürg with her friends Rosette Meltzer and Rachel Meyokas :

“We were immediately directed into a Flossenbürg Kommando named Zschoppau. The factory was on the Zschoppau river. Footbridges led from the factory to the Blocks. We would both work and sleep in the factory when there were air raid bombings, while the Germans left for the bunkers.

The armaments factory manufactured unassembled kits for airplane motors. Given that the pieces were heavy, laborers were given extra servings of food.

The factory used precision equipment, lathes [23], and we sabotaged production essentially by slowing down the machines. There was also a sense of solidarity in the factory. Some workers were prisoners of war. One of them left us a sandwich. In the evening, we shared it amongst ourselves. When we wanted to celebrate Rachel’s birthday (referring to Rachel Meyokas, who turned 16 on April 6), I asked him to bring us a pair of shoes for her ; he brought wooden clogs. Another deportee wrote a poem. The cook served a double portion of food, and each woman gave a spoonful of soup.”

Lisette Salisse and Marcelle Roth, after having spent several weeks at Ravensbrück in October, arrived in Leipzig on November 25 at the Buchenwald Kommando known as Hasag.

Lisette : “In this camp, it was a different type of work. It was factory work. We worked in teams, one week during the day, one week during the night, sorting the gas canisters, and of course we mixed up the good and the bad pieces each time we could.”

Marcelle confirmed : “We worked in teams, 12 hours per day the first week, 12 hours per night the second. We checked the munitions boxes, cartridge cases, grenades, explosives. Inspection of the lasers under the direction of civilians. I remember that they even gave us cotton gloves to avoid accidents.”

They then mentioned the living conditions. Marcelle described daily life in the camp thus :

“The barracks are made up of bunk beds which sleep one to two people. I remember that there were Belgian women. We have more to eat, food is more consistent, because we must work. We also take a shower with hot water after returning from work ! A bit like the feeling of returning home after work. Nothing like Birkenau, even if they work us hard and feed us poorly. Most of all, there is no physical abuse. However, we were frightened of the air raids which were more and more frequent.”

Lisette shared this impression :

“Surprised, we enter a clean canteen with flowers painted on the walls. The distribution of soap to shower with is a miracle and the water is hot ; what a joy it is to feel clean ! The miracle continues : they give us real soup with vegetables and potatoes, the best I’ve ever had in my life, there will be no other like it, there is no point in dreaming of better soup.”

Leipzig Kommando “Hugo Hasag” [24]

A Kommando of Ravensbrück, then of Buchenwald from September 1, 1944, this Kommando was composed primarily of women of different nationalities (Belgian, Dutch, German, Polish, Czech, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Greek, and French). The Kommando was named after the local factory, the Hasag factory belonging to Hugo Schneider. The factory had been bombed by the Allies at the beginning of 1944. Thus, the objective of the Kommando was to rebuild the factory and to produce Panzerfaust [25] and mortar shells. The leveling and reconstruction work was completed by the first convoy of women, which left Ravensbrück at the end of July 1944.

Subsequently, the detainees were assigned to military production. Most of the work was extremely grueling, especially when considering the cruel lack of food from which the deportees suffered. They worked in two teams, one team working during the day for a week and the other working during the night, except for Sundays.

The headcount of the camp was 5,000 women and about 300 men.

Death marches in January 1945

As was the case for men, a group of women detained at Birkenau and who were still there in January 1945 remained at the camp until its evacuation. Around thirty women, sick, likely exhausted by the work, worn down by the six months spent in the death camp, were declared “unfit” for the march, as the Nazi expression went, and were left at the camp on January 18, 1945, alone, until the arrival of the Red Army on January 26.

Estréa Asséo mentioned the moment where a kind of sorting took place, separating those who would leave from everyone else :

“In the middle of the night, they had just awoken us : everyone was outside, covered in our blankets. They examined our legs, and a selection took place. Why ? We asked ourselves what would happen to us. Which side should we go to ? Which women were condemned and to what ?”

These women were generally older ; seventeen were older than 40. Nevertheless, taken in by the Polish Red Cross, 20 of them finally managed to survive and returned to France in 1945 ; however, twelve others died at Auschwitz between February and March of 1945.

The other women underwent a first march on the evening of June 18, 1945, which, according to existing testimonies, lasted three days and three nights, or more, it seems for some women. They perhaps travelled through Krakow and a few villages, but they marched for the most part across isolated countrysides, seized by glacial cold. The conditions of the march were as atrocious as those of the men. The same lack of food, the same snowy roads, the same brutality from the SS [26] and from the Kapos [27] throughout the journey. Each woman marched with a friend or a group of friends, united in their suffering.

Simone Kadosche, 13 years old, evoked the departure from Auschwitz I, where she had been transferred in November :

“Around 5pm, the order was given to stop the machines. The return to the Block was rough, the SS yelling while the Kapos, holding their batons up high, hit anyone within reach. Once we reached the camp, our guardians made us form groups of five, then an officer informed us that we would leave immediately because the evacuation was beginning. We had to move quickly. They gave each of us a whole loaf of bread !”

Estréa Asséo, 36 years old, describes her first march, accompanied by her friend Mary, which left from Birkenau and lasted from January 18 to 20 :

“We marched, frozen, on snow-covered roads the whole night. We traversed cities where there were lights and life : it was Krakow, someone told me. It was a fairly large city with tall buildings. The illuminated windows warmed my heart. But we continued through fields all night and all day. The path had already been traced by the other columns [28] which had gone before us : it was strewn with bodies and blankets. I learned then that one could sleep while walking. The following evening, we arrived at a type of hangar, a barn. We spent the night there, asleep between the wheels of a piece of farming equipment, on the hay. We were piled on top of one another…. My legs would hurt, and I would cry the whole night. They were beating me. We left at dawn. A young girl who seemed very young was lying prostrate on the ground. She had been beaten because she tried to escape. Further away, another girl. This one had attempted to steal something, who knows what. The marching never ended. We were always marching, with a two-minute break every three or four hours. We spent a second night in a hangar exposed to the snow and the wind. We curled up together to stay warm. And at dawn, the march began again. We were worn out, wrapped in our blankets. Some women fell. We were marching like sick automatons. We came across a farm. Several women entered the house, and I followed them. The farmer gave us toast. She showed us into a little kitchen, and we warmed ourselves in front of a stove. We had met a human being at last ! There was a calendar on the wall. It was January 21. The memory of this woman and this date can never be erased from my memory. On the road again. I felt a bit stronger. The following day, we reached a train station.”

Simone Kadosche recounts :

“Passing by administrative buildings, I saw towering flames. The Germans were burning their records. We marched all night to the rumble of cannons. Finally, we stopped at dawn. A few detainees had found refuge in an old barn, protected from the cold. As for me, I had dug a sort of small nest in the frozen snow with my hands, and I had crouched there. I tried to bite into the bread that had been given to us when we left, but it was hard, frozen. Worn down, chilled to the bone, I fell asleep. At sunrise, we were on the road again. It was only our first night of marching but already our ranks had thinned. The snow was deep and the effort it took to move forward wore us out. We were pushed forward by the shouts and the blows of the SS accompanying us.

Towards midday, a 15-minute break was announced. Then we resumed our march. It was like this for several days. Several of us, me included, had frozen hands and feet, which caused me a great deal of pain. And we were hungry. One day in February, as our column was becoming smaller and smaller, we saw, stopped on the tracks, railcars that resembled uncovered cattle cars filled with snow.”

Her friend, Jacqueline Houly only has a few flashes of memory and a great deal of trouble speaking about these moments : “I went on the death march, in very, very low temperatures with ice and snow ; it was terrible.”

Transport in cattle cars (end of January – beginning of February 1945)

As it was for the men, the transport was carried out with cattle cars exposed to the wind, the snow, and the cold. Estréa Asséo and Simone Kadosche mention this journey of several days, emphasizing above all the atmosphere that reigned within the cars.

“We were packed in like sardines. The smallest movement would start a fight. Every three or four hours, the convoy stopped, and we got off to use the bathroom. My legs were completely paralyzed, and the guard had to lift me down in his arms. Each time we got back on, there was less space. We hit each other and cursed at one another in every language. Everyone wanted to stretch out. At a station, they threw us a dozen pieces of bread. How to describe the chaos that ensued ? Everyone’s arms were gesticulating, trying to catch a piece. We trampled on and hit one another.”

As for Simone Kadosche, she evokes gestures of solidarity, in spite of the context :

“We were pushed and squeezed against one another, on top of one another. What a stampede ! Those who fell onto the snow-covered floor were trampled by those who were climbing in. It was a nightmare ! Pressed to the edges, Jacqueline (her friend) and I formed one mass to support Sylviane, a fellow prisoner injured during the march who could no longer stand upright by herself. Our frozen fingers were stuck to the metallic edge. We moved like this for three days and three long nights. Several days later, at Ravensbrück, Sylviane passed away.”

Testimonies about the arrival at the new camps in January 1945

Here the survivors describe the overpopulation of the camps as the flood of deportees evacuated from the eastern camps arrived, from January 1945 onward. Disorganization, lack of food, disease, and the impossibility of working constituted daily life in the camp.

Henriette Cohen was evacuated from Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen on January 1, 1945. There, she discovered a hell in which, according to her, the detainees’ living conditions were almost as bad as they were at Birkenau :

“They told us on the evening of January 1 : you are leaving. We left in open cattle cars, destination unknown. Several days later we arrived at Bergen-Belsen. Originally, it was a small camp. In January, they did not know where to put these deportees who were arriving in greater numbers every day. There was an innumerable number of women. They put us in a long hallway where we remained laying down head to toe all day long without working, without doing anything. For four months, we never left that corridor. We sometimes went two or three days without eating. Typhus and diseases ravaged the camp. It was a slaughter. Every day, they removed one or two dead bodies. It was complete degradation. I saw women crawling on all fours, legs inflamed, eaten away by vermin. This was a camp of slow extermination by hunger, violence, and disease. On April 11th, I had to close the eyes of my best friend, Estelle, a loyal companion from the start. It created a massive rift through my whole being and I cried at my powerlessness, because I felt my end nearing as well. I held on for my children.”

Mezaltov El Baz said the same thing about the Bergen-Belsen camp at the beginning of December : “We were like animals. We had been abandoned in a block. We did not work.”

Estréa Asséo arrived at Ravensbrück at the end of January. She left a few weeks later, heading to the Neustadt Kommando [29] :

“We were transported towards a station and boarded a train with normal cars. In the compartments intended for 8 to 10 people, there were 50 to 100 of us. Hence a constant struggle throughout the journey. The new camp was located several kilometers from Neustadt. We arrived in the same way at overcrowded barracks and there were always quarrels and blows. We became a bit like wild beasts. Above all, I felt very fatigued, I was in a comatose state, with one obsession : food. We became weaker and weaker. Only those who still had the strength to work left to work outside of the camp.”

Simone Kadosche describes the Malchow camp, an annex of Ravensbrück where she was taken at the end of February 1945. There, she had mixed feelings, mentioning the degradation of the situation at the beginning of April :

“In this new camp, which seems very small to me, the blocks surround a courtyard at the end of which a gallows has been erected. Our first day in the camp went well and this allowed us to recuperate. Around midday, they give us a morsel of bread with a square of margarine, a real feast. Tomorrow, I will go with my fellow prisoners to work. For that, we will leave the camp because the Kommandos are associated with construction sites situated outside of the camp…”

Two months later, Simone Kadosche said :

“Little by little the camp fills past capacity ; detainees arrive every day. Since then, the Kommandos no longer leave the camp for work, and we have almost no food. The pieces of bread they give us are more and more moldy. We now spend our days sitting in the sun, but it should be said that if we were happy at first, time is now weighing on us. The days are long, much too long without work.”

The main routes of the deportees from October 1944 to May 1945

While some transports were massive, carrying hundreds of women usually towards large camps, others carried small groups in multiple and diverse directions. Likely, the size of the convoys was a function of the companies’ demands for laborers.

Bergen-Belsen-Raguhn-Theresienstadt

From November 1944 onwards, numerous women of the convoy were transferred to Bergen-Belsen [30]. Their journey was conducted either in a train with compartments, or by covered or open cattle cars, according to the testimonies. At the end of January 1945, after the January 18 evacuation of the Birkenau camp and the death march that followed, a new convoy of women arrived at Bergen-Belsen. The Archives (of BAVCC) preserve the evidence of a convoy of 401 women from Auschwitz that arrived at Bergen-Belsen on November 1, 1944, and of 3,850 women that arrived on January 24, 1945.

While the evacuation of other concentration camps began in response to the military situation, 500 women left Bergen-Belsen on February 7, 1945, for Raguhn, a Buchenwald Kommando. Amongst them, there were around 30 women of Convoy 76, who, for the most part, survived. Unfortunately, we have not found their testimonies.

They were then evacuated by train in April–May 1945 toward the Theresienstadt camp, a Kommando of the Flossenbürg camp, where they were liberated.

Other detainees remained at Bergen-Belsen until its liberation on April 15, 1945.

Ravensbrück-Malchow

In comparable, if not slightly smaller, proportions, a great number of detainees of the convoy were sent to the Ravensbrück camp from October onwards and later after January 18, 1945 [31]. They remained there for approximately two to three weeks, then they were moved to the Malchow camp, a Ravensbrück Kommando. It seems there was a departure for Malchow on November 22 for the first arrivals, then another at the end of February for the others. These deportees were liberated in May 1945 in Malchow region, after another, three- or four-day long death march. In February 1945, other women in smaller groups were sent to Kommandos located at Leipzig and at Neustadt as well as at Flossenbürg.

Still others remained at the Ravensbrück camp until its liberation on April 30, 1945.

Less common routes towards Kommandos of large camps

On November 23, 1944, a convoy of 300 women was transferred from Birkenau to Lippstadt, [32] a Buchenwald Kommando for women where there was an industrial engineering factory known as Kappler Lamb. Rosa Barcsz and Germaine Szlak were a part of this transfer. Similarly, on December 23, 65 deportees from Bergen-Belsen joined this Kommando. Estera Herenberg and Szerena Salus were a part of this later transfer. They returned in 1945.

In November 1944, deportees from Auschwitz arrived at Wilischthal, a Flossenbürg [33] Kommando where the women worked in the industrial engineering factory Deutsche Kühl.und.Kraft-maschinen-GmbH [34]. This was the case for Renée Kammeney, who died in the camp.

On November 23, 1944, a convoy of 21 deportees arrived at Leipzig, a women’s Kommando under the Buchenwald camp, to work in the armament industry. Among them were Fanny Chiel and Annette Karbowitz. Both survived.

In November 1944, 20 deportees were sent to Langenbielau, a Kommando under the Gross-Rosen camp. They worked in a factory manufacturing parts for airplanes. Sarah Grinsnir and her sister Caroline Rosenbaum worked in this Kommando until May 1945. They survived.

Stéphanie Arager was transferred to Parchnitz, a Kommando under the Gross-Rosen camp situated in Czechoslovakia, on August 28, 1944, barely two months after her arrival at Birkenau. She is the only deportee of the convoy that we know was transferred to another camp so early on, perhaps because she was a doctor by trade. She returned in 1945.

GENERAL CONCLUSION

This study of the fate of the women of Convoy 76 interned at Birkenau on July 4, 1944, illuminates the conditions of their evacuation. Their evacuation was conducted in multiple stages, which differentiates it from the evacuation of the men. Most of the women were displaced between September and December of 1944. Their transfers were spread over the course of these four months, and they were often transferred in small groups, sometimes in larger convoys. They were transported to Kommandos of larger camps, such as Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen, and Flossenbürg, to work in military industry factories there.

In contrast, the male deportees remained at the Monowitz camp, where they were employed by an IG Farben chemical factory to fulfill the demands of the war, until the day before the general evacuation of the camp on January 18, 1945, when the arrival of the Red Army was imminent. The transfers of female Birkenau detainees to western camps were conducted by train, according to survivors’ testimonies. Thus, the women did not experience the especially fatal death marches that took place during the winter of 1945, and which saw the disappearance of 80% of the men still alive in January 1945.

For the most part, this explains the different survival rates between women and men of Convoy 76. Indeed, nearly 60% of the women survived the hell of Auschwitz, while this was only the case for 22% of the men. This phenomenon spoke to us as we documented the history of Convoy 76. The present study allows us to explain this difference today. Like the men who were evacuated on January 18, 1945, we have few survivor testimonies from the women who were evacuated on the same date, which signals that many also perished during the first marches.

-Translated from the French and annotated by Somerset Grant, Scripps College. Edited by Julin Everett, Scripps College.

Transferts et évacuations : l’exemple des déportées du convoi 76 internées au camp de Birkenau

Tableau des textes traduits

Tweet

Follow @cercleshoah