History of Sorts

The Holocaust would not have been possible without the help of the railways, at least not to the extend as it happened.

The Deutsche Reichsbahn was headed by Julius Dorpmüller, who was also Reich Minister for Transport, but it was  his deputy , Albert Ganzenmüller, who had the  responsibility for the organisation of trains for deportation.

Ganzenmüller had replaced Wilhelm Kleinmann, who’resigned’ on May 26,1942. Kleinmann had stated that he had exceeded the age limit for the position, the reality was that he was pushed out because the Nazi regime weren’t impressed by the performance of the Reichsbahn in relation to the deportation and Operation Barbarossa, Hitler even threatened to send Kleinmann to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, as he did with other railway executives.

However Ganzenmüller was a more enthusiastic Nazi than Kleinmann. He collaborated in the transportation scheme for elderly German Jews to Theresienstadt and made sure  the running of transport to the extermination camps set…