Memorials to the Victims of the »Lost Transport«

Denkmäler für die Opfer des »Verlorenen Transports«

On April 23, 1945, Red Army soldiers came across an abandoned train in the countryside in southern Brandenburg. Over 2,000 Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were aboard the train. The train - which came to be known as the »Lost Transport« - had come to a halt near Tröbitz after travelling through German territory for two weeks. Several memorials in Tröbitz and nearby townships as well as a Jewish cemetery commemorate the many victims of the »Lost Transport«.

History

When the Allies were approaching the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the SS ordered the evacuation of the camp's approximately 6,700 Jewish prisoners to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The transport was divided among three trains. The prisoners aboard the first train were liberated by US troops near Magdeburg. The second train reached the Theresienstadt concentration camp following a two-week journey. The last of the three trains left Bergen-Belsen on April 9, 1945, carrying about 2,500 Jewish men, women and children. Many of them were suffering of epidemic typhus, having become infected in Bergen-Belsen. The journey ended after two weeks in the vicinity of Tröbitz after the SS guards had abandoned the train in order to escape the invading Red Army. The train had made several stops in order to unload the many dead prisoners and bury them along the train tracks. Many had succumbed to typhus or died of the inhumane conditions in the crowded train cars. In the early hours of April 23, 1945, Soviet troops discovered the train. When the soldiers opened the train doors they discovered many dead among the sick and exhausted prisoners. The Red Army accommodated the survivors in nearby houses in Tröbitz and neighbouring Schilda. Despite the rescue efforts, many more died of typhus in the following days.

Wildgrube, 1999, Monument at kilometre 106.7 of the railway line, Erika Arlt

Victims

Jewish men, women and children from over ten countries were part of the »lost transport«. In the weeks following liberation, about 320 of the survivors died. In total, over 500 of the prisoners who had been aboard that train died of starvation, exhaustion and epidemic typhus. Some of the victims of the »lost transport« were buried in mass graves along the railway line. Many more were buried later on the Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

An association of victims of National Socialist persecution set up a memorial in Tröbitz in 1952, close the the graves into which the remains of some of the dead had been transferred from mass graves in 1951. It is located at the local church in the centre of town. The inscription of 1952 made ne reference to the fact that the victims were Jews. In 1995, two new plaques in German and Hebrew finally changed that.
In 1966, a Jewish cemetery was established and consecrated by rabbis. Located here are the graves of 125 Jews who died in Tröbitz in the days and weeks after liberation. At the same time, a memorial stone was erected. In 1995, a ten meter long black granite wall was inaugurated on the Jewish cemetery with many survivors and their relatives present. It bears the names of 550 victims of the »lost transport«. The memorial wall was initiated by the »Lost Transport, Victims Memorial Society; Bergen Belsen-Tröbitz 1945« organisation which is mostly active in Israel. At the cemetery, there is now also an open air exhibition informing on the »lost transport« and the fate of the victims.
Monuments along the railway line were set up in memory of the victims buried at those sites in mass graves: at kilometre 101.6 in Langennaundorf, dedicated to 16 victims, and at kilometre 106.7 in Wildgrube, honouring 28 victims. A documentary by Hans-Jürgen Hermel, which was released in 1999, deals with the history of the »lost transport«. It is entitled »The Lost Train. Through Hell on the Wheels of the Reichsbahn«.

Tröbitz, 2016, Exhibition at the Jewish cemetery, Mirna Campanella

Tröbitz, 2016,Entrance to Jewish Cemetery, Mirna Campanella

Open

The Tröbitz Jewish Cemetery and the memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

+49 (0)35326 381

03253 Tröbitz

Tröbitz, 2016, Memorial wall with the victims' names at the Jewish cemetery, Mirna Campanella

Tröbitz, 2016, View of the Jewish cemetery with a memorial stone from 1966 and the open air exhibition, Mirna Campanella

Tröbitz, 2016, Memorial sign from 1952 at the church, Mirna Campanella

Tröbitz, 2016, Memorial plaque from 1952, Mirna Campanella

Langennaundorf, 1999, Monument at kilometre 101.6 of the railway line, Erika Arlt

Düsseldorf

Memorial to the Victims of National Socialism in Düsseldorf

Since 1987, the Düsseldorf »Stadthaus« has been home to the »Düsseldorf Memorial«, which is dedicated to all victims of National Socialism from Düsseldorf. The same building housed the Düsseldorf poli...

Bremen

Memorial Submarine Bunker »Valentin«

Since May 2011, the Memorial Submarine Bunker »Valentin« commemorates the victims of the satellite concentration camp in Bremen-Farge and six other camps in the region. Between 1938 and 1945, the pris...

Bernburg

Bernburg Memorial

Between 1940 and 1943, the former Bernburg mental hospital functioned as one of several »euthanasia« killing centres in National Socialist Germany. The memorial to the victims of National Socialist »e...