LAST DEPORTATIONS
OF THE HOLOCAUST.
YAD VASHEM ONLINE EXHIBITION
In keeping with the policy of the "Final Solution," during World War II the Germans and their collaborators uprooted millions of Jews from their homes and deported them to their deaths. This meticulously organized operation was an event of historic significance, obliterating Jewish communities throughout German-occupied territory that had existed for centuries. Vast numbers of Jews were sent straight to the extermination sites, while many others were first taken to ghettos and transit camps. Thus, the cattle – or railway – car, the principal mode of Nazi deportation, became one of the most iconic symbols of the Holocaust. Originally a symbol of progress, globalization and human technological prowess during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the railway car warped into the emblem of the backsliding of human values into the abyss of wholesale mass murder on an unprecedented scale
By the summer of 1944, the demise of Nazi Germany seemed inevitable. The German Army suffered defeat after defeat, but despite this, the machinery of extermination relentlessly continued to operate at full strength. While parts of Europe had already been liberated, the last Jews were being deported from areas still under the control of the Germans. This exhibition tells the story of those Jews who were deported in the last months of the war - from June 1944 until April 1945. The Jews were loaded onto freight cars and deported to Auschwitz and to camps in Germany, sometimes just days before the liberators arrived.
The stories told are based on material from Yad Vashem's Archives and various collections: personal documentation, testimonies, photographs, artworks, Pages of Testimony, diaries, documents, etc. The details of the deportations and their routes can be found in the Yad Vashem online research project, "Transports to Extinction".
One of the stories told is of the Benkel family from Łódź.
On 30 August 1944, a deportation train left the Litzmannstadt ghetto bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Among the passengers were head of the Judenrat, Haim Rumkowski, his family and some of the ghetto's senior personnel. Avraham Benkel and his 14-year-old son were also on the train.
In 1928, Hinda Hillman and Avraham Benkel got married in Turek, Poland. After the wedding, they moved to Łódź. Avraham made a good living in textiles, and supported his widowed mother and brothers and sisters who had remained in Turek. Hinda and Avraham's son, Shmuel, was born in 1930, followed by another baby boy, Israel-Meir, two years later. The Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and occupied Łódź approximately one week later. A ghetto was established in the city in 1940. The Benkels left their home and moved to a room in the ghetto, where Avraham managed a fur workshop for the German Army. Hinda fell ill and died in the ghetto in 1942. Two months later, 10-year-old Israel-Meir was abducted during the "Sperre" Aktion, while Avraham was waiting in line for potatoes.
Avraham and Shmuel were on the last deportation to Auschwitz, on the same train as Rumkowski.
Avraham described the arrival at Auschwitz:
I was on the same train as Rumkowski, and my son was with me. The Germans addressed us, and said that in Germany too, they would establish a fur workshop and that we would work there in the same way we worked here. Later on, it became clear that this was false, and that they were sending us to Auschwitz, not to Germany… As soon as we arrived at Auschwitz, we heard from the Jews unloading us from the cars that here, people were sent to the crematoria. Those who could still work had a chance of staying alive; those who couldn't work, or children, were doomed… they separated me from my son… I saw him standing on the other side, waving to me. I waved back. I never saw him again.
Rumkowski was on the same side as me. He approached a German and showed him a piece of paper that he held in his hand. The letter he got from Biebow. The German instructed him to sit on the side… Behind Rumkowski stood his wife, her parents, brothers and sisters-in-law, they told them to sit on the side… They took us to a place where Moshe Hassid, one of Łódź's shady characters, was manager… He told us that our Rumkowski had already been taken to the crematoria.
After a few weeks in quarantine in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Avraham was transferred to the Kaltwasser labor camp in Lower Silesia. From there he was sent to various other camps, until he was finally liberated at Theresienstadt by the Red Army on 7 May 1945.
Transports of extinction: the deportations of Jews during the Holocaust became the central theme for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2022. Stories of the last deportees is the topic of the new online exhibition created by Yad Vashem.
Yad Vashem