Video: '1942: Auschwitz'
(Wednesday, March 25, 1942, 8:20 p.m. Central European Summer Time; during the First mass transport of Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp, part of The Holocaust and World War II) — The first mass transport of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp departed today from the Poprad railway station in the Slovak Republic, in the Slovak State, arriving at its destination the following afternoon, March 26, 1942.
It was the beginning of the systematic deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Reich Security Main Office and also the first transport of Jews from Slovakia.
News of upcoming deportations leaked on Mar. 3,1942, when many Jews visited the Jewish Center offices in Bratislava to confirm the rumors. The roundup of the women from towns and villages in the eastern Šariš-Zemplín region began on Mar. 21.
In some areas, town criers announced the deportation while the women were given only twenty-four hours to prepare in order to prevent them from evading deportation. Nevertheless, many women managed to avoid the roundup, although most of these were deported on later transports. Most of the deportees were working-class and many came from Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) families. About half were between the ages of 16 and 21.
At Poprad transit camp, the women were subjected to abuse and theft from the Slovak Hlinka Guard. Before the transport departed, the SS “Jewish adviser” for Slovakia, Dieter Wisliceny, addressed the deportees on the platform, saying that they would be allowed to return home after they finished the work that Germany had planned for them.
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The first deportees were unaware of what lay ahead and tried to be optimistic. According to survivors, songs in Hebrew and Slovak were sung as the transport left the platform.
The transport left Poprad at 8:20 p.m. today and crossed the Slovak border near Skalité at 4:00 a.m. the next day, arriving at Auschwitz in the afternoon on Thursday, March 26. Here they were deprived of the last of their possessions, stripped, shaved, and assigned numbers between 1,000 and 2,000.
It was the first mass transport of Jews to Auschwitz and the first to be organized by Adolf Eichmann’s office, Referat IV B4. According to research by the American author Heather Dune Macadam, the Nazis intended to deport 999 Jewish women but their list contained duplicates, meaning that only 997 women were actually deported. Two sisters, both diabetic, committed suicide before the end of the first week at the camp.
The transport today was the first of 57 transports that departed Slovakia in 1942, carrying away 57,628 Jews of whom only a few hundred returned. The deportation was retroactively legalized in May by Decree 68/1942. For three months, Slovak Jewish women from this and subsequent transports were the only Jewish women in Auschwitz.
Most of the women died of disease, selections, malnutrition, or other causes by the end of 1942. A few were able to secure privileged positions in administration, which allowed them to obtain the necessities for survival. According to testimonies, there were about 20 survivors from the transport.
