Railways and the Holocaust

Railways and the holocaust

the tRains that shamed the woRld the tRains that shamed the woRld

Robin Jones

Robin jones

THREE GREAT

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Railways

and the

holocaust

Introduction –

by Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild

Chapter 6 Cattle Trucks

Chapter 13 The cancer spreads

Chapter 1 Railway history – Hijacked by hell

Chapter 7 Terminus

Chapter 14

Chapter 8 Berlin ghost stations – The ghosts of Gleis 17

Chapter 15 Kindertransport

Chapter 2 Racial cleansing – Germany was not alone Chapter 3 Blind hatred – The ultimate conclusion Chapter 4

The dawn of mass murder

Chapter 5 Fourth class passengers

Editor: Robin Jones Editorial consultant: Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild Design: Michael Baumber Group production editor: Tim Hartley

Only disobeying orders

Chapter 9 Hitler’s special train Chapter 10 Day of the kriegsloks Chapter 11 The softest targets of all Chapter 12 I don’t look like Fagin... so why pick on me?

Production manager: Craig Lamb Marketing manager: Charlotte Park Publishing director: Dan Savage Commercial director: Nigel Hole Managing director: Brian Hill

Chapter 16 Why wasn’t Auschwitz bombed?

Chapter 17 The Trans-Saharan Railway Chapter 18 When Hitler met Brunel Chapter 19 Days of reckoning Chapter 20 How much have we learned?

Published by: Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 523456 Printed by William Gibbons & Sons, Wolverhampton

A HERITAGE RAILWAY PUBLICATION Special thanks to Dr Alfred Gottwaldt, of Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin, and Beth Shalom, Nottinghamshire. *Pictures marked thus are published under a Creative Commons licence, the full details of which can be found at www.creativecommons.org

© Mortons Media Group Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

railways and the holocaust 3

INTRODUCTION

WarsaW

The ‘master race’ soldiers overcome a group of ‘dangerously subversive’ Jewish women and small children during the Nazi’s subjugation of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in May 1943.

The image was part of a report to Heinrich Himmler, the original caption in German translating as ‘forcibly pulled out of dug-outs’.

Only the little boy in the centre survived the subsequent deportation to the death camps.

The SS soldier facing him with an MP18 sub-machine gun is Josef Blösche, a former farmhand and waiter, who Jews had nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’ following his raping and then killing of women from the ghetto.

intellectuals, jazz music players (yes, they were a victim of Nazi persecution too – ever think the Holocaust is defined merely by race or ideology), modern artists, homosexuals, Communists, Social Democrats, refugees from mainland Europe and other ‘undesirables’ would have been rounded up and placed initially in concentration camps.

Where? Well, Dachau is a town just north of Munich, Sachsenhausen a village near the town of Oranienburg on the electrified SBahn just north of Berlin – so one could position, say, a camp outside Luton for London and Rawtenstall north of Manchester for the north west.

Probably another in the south west – maybe near Exeter – and one in South Wales (a lot of trades unionists and devout Methodists there!) – let us say, up in the valleys near Newport, so it could also scoop up people from the Cotswolds.

Perhaps one at Stourbridge for the West Midlands; one in the Lowlands of Scotland – maybe near Castlecary.

And of course, there would be plenty of POW camps for the demobilised and defeated soldiers, held as prisoners of war until they could be released as ideologically 10 RaIlways aND The hOlOCaUsT

Following what was clearly his finest hour, he received the German War Merit Cross for his actions during the uprising.

Blösche evaded prosecution for many years after the war because his face was scarred in an accident at work in 1946.

However, East German police arrested him in January 1967. At

sound and perhaps called up to join the Wehrmacht. Those who refused to toe the line could be disposed of with a bullet in the back of the neck. Maybe a special camp for Women (like Ravensbrück) would be established. And we are not talking yet about labour camps or subsidiary camps near industries.

Then the prisoners would be rounded up by lorry or even bus and driven to the goods depots – say, at West Hampstead or Accrington. Trains of maybe 40 12T goods vans, with guards’ brake vans marshalled at front and rear and maybe an old Midland coach in the middle for the escort troops, headed perhaps by an LMS Fowler 7F 0-8-0, would then depart every evening for the north – in each van 30 to 40 men and women, standing, no seats, no toilet, no food.

On arrival they would be shouted out of the wagons and put into barbed-wire compounds. If they were lucky they would be put to hard labour, if not – or too old, too weak, too ill – they would simply be allowed to die. Senior officers would be shot.

And then the sequence of administrative orders would appear, on posters, on the BBC radio, in the newspapers. The Jews would have to wear a distinctive yellow star. Able-

his trial in April 1969, he was found guilty of having been involved in the deportation of 300,000 Jews, and of murdering of up to 2000 including newborn infants, pregnant women, handicapped persons, and the elderly.

He was executed in Leipzig on July 29, 1969, by a shot through the neck.

bodied men would have to report for work in the ‘Reich’. All the munitions factories would be working three shifts, with slave labour too – Hitler would want every tank, every shell, every aeroplane for his planned attack on the Soviet Union.

There would have been plenty of people who would have gone along with the new system the way they went along with any system. If some of their neighbours or colleagues began to disappear, well, that was just one of those things. That LNER J27s were hauling trains of vans up into the Kielder Forest where the ‘passengers’ would be forced to get out, dig their own mass pits and then be shot into them, would not be something one would really believe, even if a neighbour’s son’s cousin’s school friend told him this. Who would want to believe this?

This is the nightmare that was avoided – but only just – by a combination of heroism, determination, luck (think of the weather on certain days and weeks that held up the German invasion fleet) and Nazi bad planning.

But please think like this, and the story becomes much closer, much more intense.

So what happened?

No one can say that the period from 1918

INTRODUCTION

WarsaW

The ‘master race’ soldiers overcome a group of ‘dangerously subversive’ Jewish women and small children during the Nazi’s subjugation of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in May 1943.

The image was part of a report to Heinrich Himmler, the original caption in German translating as ‘forcibly pulled out of dug-outs’.

Only the little boy in the centre survived the subsequent deportation to the death camps.

The SS soldier facing him with an MP18 sub-machine gun is Josef Blösche, a former farmhand and waiter, who Jews had nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’ following his raping and then killing of women from the ghetto.

intellectuals, jazz music players (yes, they were a victim of Nazi persecution too – ever think the Holocaust is defined merely by race or ideology), modern artists, homosexuals, Communists, Social Democrats, refugees from mainland Europe and other ‘undesirables’ would have been rounded up and placed initially in concentration camps.

Where? Well, Dachau is a town just north of Munich, Sachsenhausen a village near the town of Oranienburg on the electrified SBahn just north of Berlin – so one could position, say, a camp outside Luton for London and Rawtenstall north of Manchester for the north west.

Probably another in the south west – maybe near Exeter – and one in South Wales (a lot of trades unionists and devout Methodists there!) – let us say, up in the valleys near Newport, so it could also scoop up people from the Cotswolds.

Perhaps one at Stourbridge for the West Midlands; one in the Lowlands of Scotland – maybe near Castlecary.

And of course, there would be plenty of POW camps for the demobilised and defeated soldiers, held as prisoners of war until they could be released as ideologically 10 RaIlways aND The hOlOCaUsT

Following what was clearly his finest hour, he received the German War Merit Cross for his actions during the uprising.

Blösche evaded prosecution for many years after the war because his face was scarred in an accident at work in 1946.

However, East German police arrested him in January 1967. At

sound and perhaps called up to join the Wehrmacht. Those who refused to toe the line could be disposed of with a bullet in the back of the neck. Maybe a special camp for Women (like Ravensbrück) would be established. And we are not talking yet about labour camps or subsidiary camps near industries.

Then the prisoners would be rounded up by lorry or even bus and driven to the goods depots – say, at West Hampstead or Accrington. Trains of maybe 40 12T goods vans, with guards’ brake vans marshalled at front and rear and maybe an old Midland coach in the middle for the escort troops, headed perhaps by an LMS Fowler 7F 0-8-0, would then depart every evening for the north – in each van 30 to 40 men and women, standing, no seats, no toilet, no food.

On arrival they would be shouted out of the wagons and put into barbed-wire compounds. If they were lucky they would be put to hard labour, if not – or too old, too weak, too ill – they would simply be allowed to die. Senior officers would be shot.

And then the sequence of administrative orders would appear, on posters, on the BBC radio, in the newspapers. The Jews would have to wear a distinctive yellow star. Able-

his trial in April 1969, he was found guilty of having been involved in the deportation of 300,000 Jews, and of murdering of up to 2000 including newborn infants, pregnant women, handicapped persons, and the elderly.

He was executed in Leipzig on July 29, 1969, by a shot through the neck.

bodied men would have to report for work in the ‘Reich’. All the munitions factories would be working three shifts, with slave labour too – Hitler would want every tank, every shell, every aeroplane for his planned attack on the Soviet Union.

There would have been plenty of people who would have gone along with the new system the way they went along with any system. If some of their neighbours or colleagues began to disappear, well, that was just one of those things. That LNER J27s were hauling trains of vans up into the Kielder Forest where the ‘passengers’ would be forced to get out, dig their own mass pits and then be shot into them, would not be something one would really believe, even if a neighbour’s son’s cousin’s school friend told him this. Who would want to believe this?

This is the nightmare that was avoided – but only just – by a combination of heroism, determination, luck (think of the weather on certain days and weeks that held up the German invasion fleet) and Nazi bad planning.

But please think like this, and the story becomes much closer, much more intense.

So what happened?

No one can say that the period from 1918

Chapter seven

Terminus!

At a very distant glance, it could be a busy seaside station on a summer Saturday, packed with families with babies and young children and their luggage, eager to be directed to the bus to their hotels. However, the uniforms, the boxcars and then the trademark gateway tell all. This was the selection on the ramp outside Auschwitz-Birkenau, where SS monsters such as Josef Mengele decided at a glance who was to live, or die within hours in the nearby gas chamber.

58 raILWaYs anD the hOLOCaUst

Chapter seven

Terminus!

At a very distant glance, it could be a busy seaside station on a summer Saturday, packed with families with babies and young children and their luggage, eager to be directed to the bus to their hotels. However, the uniforms, the boxcars and then the trademark gateway tell all. This was the selection on the ramp outside Auschwitz-Birkenau, where SS monsters such as Josef Mengele decided at a glance who was to live, or die within hours in the nearby gas chamber.

58 raILWaYs anD the hOLOCaUst

Chapter thirteen

Hungarian Jews are selected for either immediate gassing or slave labour as they leave the boxcars of a deportation train at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Why Jews today find it offensive to see re-enactors in Nazi uniforms standing alongside trains at heritage railways in the UK might just about be understandable.

S

hipping Jews and other unwanted people to their deaths was big business for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Not only was it paid an estimated 240 Reichsmark to ship eight million people, but took its cut from the oneway tickets that the Jews themselves were forced to buy, after already being charged for accommodation in the ghetto. It was a win-win situation: the Nazi ideologists could humiliate the Jews even further, while there 100 raiLWaYS anD the hOLOCaUSt

were big bucks for those who took them to their deaths.

The Reichsbahn transported people from all over Germany to a central point of no return, travelling beyond the landmass of Axis-occupied Europe, Norway and North Africa. One day, had it not been stopped in its tracks, it could have been used on a sizeable portion of the British population, Jewish or not.

Belgium became the first country in Nazi-

occupied Western Europe to transport Jews to Auschwitz, sending them aboard socalled ‘phantom trains’ to France in the first instance.

Hitler placed General Alexander von Falkenhausen in military control of Belgium and Northern France, with SS Gruppenführer Eggert Reeder as his administrative deputy. Von Falkenhausen disagreed with the Nazi ideologists over Jews, and Reeder negotiated an agreement

to allow native Belgian Jews to remain in Belgium, in a bid to encourage less resistance by local population to the German’ rule.

A total of 2250 of unemployed Belgian Jews were sent to forced labour camps in Northern France to build the Atlantic Wall, while in 1942, 10,000 non-Belgian Jews were sent to Auschwitz, which received its first Belgian Jews on August 5 that year.

Between then and July 1944, 28 trains

transported more than 25,000 Jewish deportees to Auschwitz.

The willing French

The track record of France with regards to deportation trains could be judged appalling.

Between March 1942 and August 1944, SNCF shipped 76,000 Jews and other unwanted people to Nazi concentration camps – including US and Canadian pilots shot down over France who ended up in

Buchenwald and Auschwitz instead of Prisoner of War camps as per the Geneva convention.

The carriages and boxcars were packed as tightly as possible in order to maximise revenue. Railway staff forced all passengers, including young children and the elderly, to stand throughout trips which lasted several days, with no food, no drink, and no toilet facilities, and fewer than 3% of all those deported survived. SNCF staff even complained when Red Cross workers tried to provide food and water to the victims because it slowed down the deportation schedules. Senior rail officials accompanied the trains to the French border.

One SNCF train left the holding camp at Compiegne on July 2, 1944, with 2166 passengers. When it arrived at Dachau three days later, 536 people were already dead.

SNCF employees cleaned the cars and disposed of the bodies of the deceased.

The internment camp at Drancy, built as subsidised housing in the form of tower blocks and run until August 1944 by Alois Brunner, a Nazi who ended up spending his latter years holed up in Damascus and might still be there alive today, was the deportation train transport hub for the Paris area. By February 3, 1944, 67 trains had departed for Birkenau.

Under the direction of Heinz Röthke, between August 1942 to June 1943, nearly two-thirds of those deported in SNCF boxcars requisitioned by the Nazis from Drancy were sent to Auschwitz.

It was also from Drancy that Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, transported 44 Jewish children that he seized in a raid on a children’s home at Izieu on April 6, 1944, to Auschwitz. There were 42 children and five adults, while two of the oldest children and the home’s superintendent were killed by a firing squad in Estonia.

The last train from France left Drancy on July 31, 1944 with more than 300 children on board.

Independent studies have, over the ensuing decades, concluded that SNCF collaborated with the Nazis. In the first meeting with the Nazis concerning the deportations, it was agreed that SNCF would retain control and responsibility for the trains, including the technical arrangements.

It has been said that while SNCF protested at any German order which could reduce profitability, not one voice was raised in anger over the death camp trains.

It was discovered that even after the Allies had liberated Paris following the D-Day landings in 1944, SNCF still submitted invoices for the deportations. The postwar French government declined to pay.

SNCF later publicly argued that its staff would have faced execution had they refused to operate the trains. Yet while it has been shown that some railway workers showed solidarity with deportees, only one footplateman refused to drive a deportation train. A man named Léon Bronchart refused on October 31, 1942, to work on such a train, and was given only a brief suspension for his RAILWAYS AND THE HOLOCAUST 101

“...the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew”.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

The 1920s and 30s were decades of massive change following the ‘war to end all wars’. Those years saw Britain’s railways take on the rest of the planet in the race for the world steam speed record – and win. Railwaymen were hailed as heroes.

The steam railway was one of the greatest gifts of all to mankind... yet it could be argued and demonstrated that just across the sea it made the world’s darkest days possible.

Picture YOUR life today... then imagine being told you may no longer go to school, you must surrender your driving licence, you are sacked from your job, you may no longer use public transport...your bank account is closed, your savings confiscated, pension no longer paid... you are to be ‘resettled’... AND THE WAY YOU WILL BE MOVED IS BY TRAIN. But you are not just transported, you are uprooted, traumatised, humiliated and tortured, and that is before you are even pushed into a closed, windowless goods wagons.

More than 11 million innocent people were murdered, including six million Jews, along with Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, Sinti, homosexuals and anyone else who did not ‘fit’.

In this publication, Robin Jones, editor of Heritage Railway magazine, looks at the way the fantastic legacy of Richard Trevithick was perverted to become integral to an evil regime.

This is the story of the Holocaust... as viewed from track level. £6.99