Tag Archives: Logistics

Mechelen transit camp-The logistics.

Mechelen-SS-Sammellager_-_Dossin_Casern

I know the title may seem a bit disrespectful but it is not meant that way, it was the only way I felt I could describe it.

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis made preparations to deport the Jews of Belgium. They converted the Dossin de St. Georges military barracks in the city of Mechelen (Fr., Malines) into a transit camp. Mechelen, a city of 60,000, was considered an ideal location for this purpose. Located halfway between Antwerp and Brussels, two cities which contained most of the Jewish population of Belgium, the city had good rail connections to the east.

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At the start of the war, the population of Belgium was overwhelmingly Catholic. Jews made up the largest non-Christian population in the country, numbering between 70–75,000 out of a population of 8 million. Most lived in the cities of Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi and Liège. The vast majority were recent immigrants to Belgium who had fled persecution in Germany and Eastern Europe, and, as a result, only a small minority actually possessed Belgian citizenship.

Shortly after the invasion of Belgium, the Military Government passed a series of anti-Jewish laws in October 1940. The Belgian Committee of Secretary-Generals refused from the start to co-operate on passing any anti-Jewish measures and the Military Government seemed unwilling to pass further legislation. The German government began to seize Jewish-owned businesses and forced Jews out of positions in the civil service.

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The first group of Jews arrived in the camp Mechelen from Antwerp on July 27, 1942. Between August and December 1942, two transports with about 1,000 Jews each left the camp every week for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Between August 4, 1942, and July 31, 1944, a total of 28 trains carrying 25,000+ Jews left Mechelen for Poland; most of them went to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Below is a breakdown of the transports, the logistical numbers.I usually don’t like the statistics but if you see the numbers from a relatively unknown and small deportation centre it is just staggering.

Transports from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau
Deported people per age (above and below 15 years old) and gender. All were Jewish people, with the exception of Transport Z in 1943.

Transports Date Men Boys Women Girls Total
Transport 1 4 August 1942 544 28 403 23 998
Transport 2 11 August 1942 459 25 489 26 999
Transport 3 15 June 1942 380 48 522 50 1000
Transport 4 18 August 1942 339 133 415 112 999
Transport 5 25 August 1942 397 88 429 81 995
Transport 6 29 August 1942 355 60 531 54 1000
Transport 7 1 September 1942 282 163 401 154 1000
Transport 8 10 September 1942 388 111 403 98 1000
Transport 9 12 September 1942 408 91 401 100 1000
Transport 10 15 September 1942 405 132 414 97 1048
Transport 11 26 September 1942 562 231 713 236 1742
Transport 12 10 October 1942 310 135 423 131 999
Transport 13 10 October 1942 228 89 259 99 675
Transport 14 24 October 1942 324 112 438 121 995
Transport 15 24 October 1942 314 30 93 39 476
Transport 16 31 October 1942 686 16 94 27 823
Transport 17 31 October 1942 629 45 169 32 875
Transport 18 15 January 1943 353 105 424 65 947
Transport 19 15 January 1943 239 51 270 52 612
Transport 20 19 April 1943 463 115 699 127 1404
Transport 21 31 July 1943 672 103 707 71 1553
Transport 22a 20 September 1943 291 39 265 36 631
Transport 22b 20 September 1943 305 74 351 64 794
Transport 23 15 January 1944 307 33 293 22 655
Transport Z 15 January 1944 85 91 101 74 351
transport 24 4 April 1944 303 29 275 18 625
transport 25 19 May 1944 237 20 230 21 508
transport 26 31 July 1944 280 15 251 17 563
Total August 1942 – July 1944 10,545 2,212 10,463 2,047 25,267

Transport Z was designated for Roma

Of the 25.267 deported only 1240 survived

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Sources

United States Holocaust Museum

Wikipedia Belgium

 

Kühne & Nagel moving Jewish possessions for the Nazi’s

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The world’s leading transport and logistics company Kühne + Nagel is portrayed in a new study as the removal firm of choice for the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Under the code name “Furniture Action” or also “M-Action” (abbreviation for “Möbel-Aktion”), the “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg” looted approximately 70,000 homes since early 1942 of French, Belgian, and Dutch Jews who had either fled or had been deported. The objects of art from these homes were inventoried separately,

Alfred Rosenbergphotographed, and transported to Germany. Alfred Rosenberg, who also became “Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories” as of July 1941, wanted to furnish German administrative offices in the East with the confiscated furniture and other items. In fact, bombed-out families in Germany mainly profited from the looted furniture.In Paris alone, the “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg” combed through 38,000 homes. A Parisian department store served as an interim storage space before the looted furniture was transported to Germany.

K+N played a key role in the so-called ‘M Action’ – plundering the homes of western Jews who had been deported.

Furniture, clothing and possessions were stored in vast warehouses and either sold at knock-down prices or distributed to Germans who lost everything in Allied bombing raids.

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The first cargo ship from Amsterdam arrived in December 1942 in Bremen. On board were 220 armchairs, 105 beds, 363 tables, 598 chairs, 126 wall units, 35 sofas, 307 boxes containing glassware, 110 mirrors, 158 lamps, 32 watches, a gramophone and two baby strollers.

That cargo ship full of goods stolen from Jews who were sent off to concentration camps was chartered by K+N.

“This is a form of corpse robbing,” said Frank Bajohr of the Munich Centre for Holocaust studies.

“The genocide of the Nazis was a bureaucratically organized process of individuals, institutions and companies. And Kühne + Nagel was involved in this process. I see the company in the relative proximity to mass murder.” he added

He  also added that although no company representative stood at the edge of death pits or in extermination camps, the company bears corporate responsibility for its role in the Holocaust.

For its part, the company said: ‘Kühne + Nagel is aware of the shameful incidents during the period of the Third Reich and regrets very much the fact that it has exercised its activities in part on behalf of the Nazi regime.’

Historian Jaromír Balcar, who carried out the research with Beerman, said many other companies in Nazi German acted as accomplices in the robbery of the doomed Jews.

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The logistics of the Holocaust

Umschlagplatz_loading

The title might sound very cold and calculated but the fact is in order to facilitate the mass deportation the Nazis applied very efficient and sophisticated supply chain management principles.

In commerce, supply chain management (SCM), the management of the flow of goods and services,however they were the same principles used during the Holocaust.

Crucial to this was the involvement of the Reich Ministry of Transport.

Reichsverkehrsministerium

Between Feb 2, 1937 and May 23, 1945 the head of the ministry was Julius Heinrich Dorpmueller, although initially not a member of the NSDAP he did join the party in January 1941.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-E00795,_Julius_Dorpmüller

After the Nazi seizure of power Dorpmüller replaced nearly all “non-Aryan” workers with National Socialists. Dorpmüller became Reich Transport Minister on 2 February 1937 after the resignation of his predecessor Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach. In April 1938, when a Berlin train stopped in Passau, Dorpmüller was ceremonially welcomed and escorted to the Danube, where he continued his trip to Linz and Vienna on board the Austrian Wotan.

On 11 July 1939  was confirmed as transport minister and also General Manager of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

According to Albert Speer, Dorpmüller confessed that “The Reichsbahn has so few cars and locomotives available for the German area that it can no longer assume responsibility for meeting the most urgent transportation needs.” Speer then convinced Hitler to name Albert Ganzenmüller state secretary under Dorpmüller

Albert_Ganzenmüller_(Foto_von_Ittenbach)_1942_klein

To solve the problem of having too few cars and locomotives the Reich Ministry of Transport took over state railways from occupied territories but also privately owned railways.

Date of takeover Name
18-Mar-38 Austrian Federal Railways (BBÖ)
19-Oct-38 Parts of the Czechoslovakian State Railway (ČSD)
23-Mar-39 Parts of the Lithuanian State Railway
01-Nov-39 Parts of the Polish State Railways (PKP)
from 1940 Parts of the Belgian Railways (NMBS/SNCB)
1941 Parts of the Yugoslavian Railways (JŽ-JЖ)
1941 Parts of the Soviet Railways (SŽD/СЖД)

Privately owned railways

Date of takeover Name
01-Jan-38 Lübeck-Büchen Railway (LBE)
01-Jan-38 Brunswick State Railway (BLE)
01-Aug-38 Lokalbahn Munich (LAG)
01-Jan-39 Lusatian Railway Company
1939 to 1940 In former Austria: Schneeberg Railway, Schafberg Railway, Steyr Valley Railway, Lower Austrian Waldviertel Railway, Vienna–Aspang railway, Mühlkreis Railway
1940 9 former Czechoslovakian private railways, which the DR had already taken over the operations of in October 1938
From 1940 Railways in Luxembourg (Prince Henri Railway and Mining Company, William Luxembourg Railway Company, Luxemburg Narrow Gauge Railways)
01-Jan-41 Mecklenburg Frederick William Railway Company
01-Jan-41 Prignitz Railway

 
01-Jan-41 Wittenberge-Perleberg Railway]
1 Mai 1941 Eutin-Lübeck Railway Company (ELE)
01-Aug-41 Kreis Oldenburg Railway (KOE)
01-Jan-43 Toitz-Rustow–Loitz light railway
01-Jul-43 Schipkau-Finsterwald Railway Company

In early 1940, a new unit was commissioned in the RVM Rail Operations Department E II: No. 21 Massenbeförderung or “Mass Transport”. It was responsible for the organization and timetables of special trains deporting Jews from Germany and the occupied territories, working closely with the SS Reich Main Security Office. Following the Wansee Conference in 1942, transports also began running directly to the extermination camps.As a result, the RVM became responsible for a substantial part of The Holocaust and was an essential component that made its full scale possible.

There is no record that Minister Dorpmüller ever considered the moral implications of this. So long as the Reichsbahn maintained its internal autonomy, he served whatever transport requirements the regime demanded. He was considered one-dimensional, only interested in running railroad

Ganzenmüller was immediately involved in the organisation of trains for deportation. He collaborated in the transportation scheme for elderly German Jews to Theresienstadt and ensured the smooth running of transport to the extermination camps set up under Operation Reinhardt. On 16 July 1942, Karl Wolff, the Personal Adjutant to Heinrich Himmler, complained to the newly appointed under-secretary about irregular transport and track repairs on the line to the extermination camp at Sobibor. Ganzenmüller replied in writing on 28 July 1942 as follows:

Karl Wolff

A train carrying 5,000 Jews has run daily since 22 July from Warsaw to Treblinka via Malkinia; furthermore, another train has run twice a week with 5,000 Jews from Przemysl to Belzec. The senior management of the eastern division of the railways, ‘Gedob’ (Generaldirektion der Ostbahnen), is in constant touch with the security service (Sicherheitsdienst) in Krakau. The latter is in agreement that transport from Warsaw to Sobibor via Lublin should continue while the reconstruction work on this stretch renders such movements impossible ([until] approximately October 1942).

Karl Wolff thanked him on 13 August 1942 in a personal letter:

… I note with particular pleasure from your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen race has been running daily for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. […]

At the beginning of 1943, Himmler approached Ganzenmüller directly in order to ensure the pending “removal of Jews” to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The great Frankfurt Market Hall  played a significant role as a distribution center during  the Holocaust.

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On 1 January 2005, the City of Frankfurt transferred the Großmarkthalle and its area to the European Central Bank (the sale contract had been signed in 2002), which will erect its seat there.

There is a very little information on the role of the drivers of the trains. They must have had some indication to what happened to the passengers. There is one account though of a heroic driver.

On the 19th of April 1943 a  train of Transport 20, bound from Belgium for Auschwitz with 1,631 Jewish men, women, and children, as well as a Sonderwagen with 19 resistance members and escapees from previous transports (who were marked a cross painted in red, indicating that they should be executed immediately at Auschwitz), was stopped on the tracks in Belgium  Youra Livchitz,

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a young Jewish doctor and resistance fighter, and two non-Jewish comrades, Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon, who carried only one pistol and a red lantern among them. They successfully signaled the train to a halt, then opened one rail car and liberated 17 people while firing on the guards to create an impression of being a large attack group. Soon they themselves were driven off by gunfire, but because the train driver, Albert Dumon, deliberately drove very slowly and stopped frequently to allow people to jump without being injured or killed, 236 in all escaped, 115 without being killed or recaptured. Dr. Livchitz was arrested by the Gestapo one month later, but managed to overpower his guard and escape; he was rearrested in June and executed by firing squad the following year. His two compatriots in the train rescue survived the war. The entire Transport 20 delivered 25,257 Jews and 352 Roma to Auschwitz, of whom only 1,205 returned home alive.

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