Kladovo transport

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The Kladovo Transport was an illegal Jewish refugee transport that started from Vienna on November 25, 1939 and whose destination was Eretz Israel . Due to the early freezing of the Danube , the refugees had to winter in the Yugoslav port of Kladovo . In 1940 they waited in vain for a deep-sea ship to continue their journey, they had to move to the port of Šabac on the Save , where they were overtaken by the National Socialists in 1941. Only around 200 young people and a few adults were rescued or escaped on their own. The men of the transport were shot by units of the Wehrmacht on October 12th and 13th on the orders of General der Infanterie Franz Böhme . The women were transferred to the Sajmište concentration camp in early January 1942 and murdered in a gas truck under Herbert Andorfer between March 19 and May 10, 1942 .

background

The possibility of legal immigration ( aliyah ) to the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine promised by the British in the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was already restricted in the 1920s by the introduction of a quota system with certificates of various categories. From the 1930s onwards, Zionist organizations reacted by carrying out illegal transports ( Alija Bet ). Within the Hagana Zionist underground army in Palestine, which was close to the Zionist Workers' Party, the Mossad le Alija Bet department was set up to organize illegal transports at the turn of 1938/1939 . Between Austria's annexation to the German Reich and the beginning of World War II , 17,000 people were able to leave Europe in 50 illegal transports.

Austrian Jews were largely assimilated; they supported the Jewish rebuilding work mainly financially and ideally, without thinking of emigrating themselves. The Vienna branch of the Zionist umbrella organization Hechaluz , which had existed since the 1920s , primarily served as a transit station for Eastern European Jews . With the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938, the Nuremberg laws that were gradually passed in the old Reich came into effect overnight. The resulting aggressive expulsion policy by the National Socialists turned emigration into a mass refugee movement supported by the SS.

In May 1939, the British Mandate Government in Palestine published the " White Paper " which limited immigration to 75,000 for the next five years. Other countries also drastically restricted immigration opportunities. The historian Ralph Weingarten describes the situation on the occasion of the 1938 refugee conference in Évian :

"Both sides, the" receiving "countries and the countries of displacement, basically wanted the same thing: to deport this annoying, annoying minority somewhere, far away, to sink it in some remote corner of the world, to make it disappear somewhere."

It became more and more difficult for Jews to escape the threats posed by the National Socialists, as their sphere of influence continued to expand. This made illegal immigration to Palestine ever more important; At the same time, the organization of the transports was made more difficult at the beginning of the war. The British regarded Jewish refugees from the hostile areas as "hostile foreigners" and in the Balkan countries it was hardly possible to acquire disused ocean-going ships. In Romania , 3,000 refugees were already waiting to continue their journey.

In autumn 1939, Adolf Eichmann , SS-Obersturmbannführer and founder of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna , increased the pressure on Georg Überall , General Secretary of the Austrian Hechaluz . Eichmann threatened all not yet emigrated Hechaluz members - it waited hundreds in the Hachshara -Lagern outside Vienna for their departure - to deport to Poland if they would not soon out of the country, and statuierte with the first Nisko transport a Example. He also ordered Überall to work with Berthold Storfer , whom he had appointed as head of the “Committee for Jewish Overseas Transports”. Although he was Jewish, he was not a Zionist, and in 1939, with the support of the SS , he gained more and more influence over the organization of illegal transports. The Hechaluz representatives saw in him a collaborator of the National Socialists and avoided contact, which ultimately hindered both sides in their work.

The organization of the transport

In the face of Eichmann's threats, Überall decided to dismantle the Hechaluz centers as quickly as possible and move their members out of the country, even though no ocean-going vessel could be found despite the intensive efforts of the Mossad agents in Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Mossad agent Moshe Agami gave his consent to the transport. Ferdinand Ceipek, a former National Socialist who was disappointed with the political practice, supported the Jewish rescue attempts and arranged for Georg Überall 800 regular entry visas into Slovakia .

For the first time, groups of the youth aliyah were assigned to an illegal transport . This approach was very controversial; the head of the Vienna Youth Aliyah, Aron Menczer , defended the decision. In a letter to a friend shortly after the group left, he wrote that there was no other option and that the risk that was taken was less than letting the opportunity pass. In terms of age, about a third of the group consisted of children and adolescents up to the age of 17, half of whom were accompanied by their parents, the other half in the care of the youth associations. Another third were the 18- to 35-year-old Chaluzim of Hechalutz. The rest was made up of veteran Zionists who had previously waited in vain for entry certificates due to their age, as well as couples and, last but not least, individual Jews who could still pay a lot for the trip despite the political circumstances. The participants were equally diverse in terms of their social origins, they represented the entire spectrum of Central European Jews, and their religiosity ranged from orthodox to moderately traditional to atheistic .

The drive

On November 25, 1939, the 822 people selected for the transport were brought to Bratislava by train . They were only allowed to take a rucksack with personal items, which could not weigh more than eight kilos, as well as ten Reichsmarks in foreign currency , according to the "emigrant exemption limit" . However, they brought plenty of optimism with them.

When they arrived in Bratislava, they were interned in the abandoned ammunition factory “Patronka” and a former bachelor home (“Slobodrna”) and guarded by members of the Slovak fascist Hlinka Guard . They were cared for by the local Jewish community. 130 refugees from Berlin , 50 from Gdansk and about 100 from Prague and Bratislava joined the group. While the Danube was already threatening to freeze over, they waited in the camps without being given an appointment to continue their journey. The Slovak authorities issued an ultimatum threatening to return the group to the German border, which would have meant their admission to concentration camps. After a ten-day stay, they were brought to the port in buses and were able to board the DDSG steamer Uranus, which sailed under the swastika flag . On this, a few hours after the first lunch, all refugees suffered from severe diarrhea, which led to the suspicion that they were supposed to be poisoned.

The transport was stopped at the border with Hungary and sent back to “home”. Contrary to the fears that the passengers now had to endure, the Uranus anchored in Bratislava. The renewed departure from Bratislava took place on December 13th. However, the DDSG refused to go to the Danube Delta due to the unsecured onward journey . The passengers were therefore relocated near Budapest in the middle of the river on the three small, Yugoslav river steamers "Car Nikola", "Car Dušan" and "Kraljica Marija". These were chartered for a lot of money on behalf of the Mossad agent Moshe Agami from the "Association of Jewish Religious Communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia".

The refugees took the three excursion boats to Prahovo , where they were detained from December 18 to 30, because they were not allowed to continue across the Romanian border. In the meantime, the weather conditions made it impossible to continue their journey and they had to drive back up the Danube to the winter port in Kladovo , located in the Iron Gate , where they were supposed to spend the winter. The General Secretary of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , Sime Spitzer, had to undertake to take care of the group towards the Yugoslav government . However, the Jewish communities were already overstrained by the supply of the massive influx of refugees that began in 1933 and since the annexation of Austria. In addition, due to its unfavorable location and wintry conditions, the port could only be reached with a 24-hour journey, including a seven-hour sleigh ride , as the nearest train station was 54 kilometers away. Despite the circumstances, Spitzer promised to create tolerable conditions for the refugees.

The time in Kladovo

The cramped conditions on the ships, which the people had been prepared to endure temporarily for the journey, became unbearable and threatening with the prospect of wintering in Kladovo. The six cabins served the tour guide and the transport doctor as well as a sickroom, all the other participants slept tightly packed on benches and floors in the heated salon or in the cold on deck. The hygienic conditions were also catastrophic. Around the middle of January they were given a converted tug equipped with coke long-burning stoves with 280 berths as a relief ship and after a few weeks they were given permission to use a narrow strip of shore for walking under the guard of gendarmes.

In mid-March 1940, Rose Jacobs, delegate of the American-Jewish women's organization Hadassah , made the arduous journey to the tour group during a European trip and was shocked by the conditions in a letter:

“[...] what a sight, what a story! Each of the travelers is a tragedy for himself and - beyond that - the symbol of the tragedy of a people. "

Jacobs believed that it was only thanks to the extreme cold that epidemics had not yet broken out - it was one of the coldest winters of the century. According to their observations, the refugees on board had u. a. already set up a shoe and clothing repair shop, brought out their own newspapers and held Hebrew and English courses. At the end of March, the ships were moved to the summer harbor. Due to its proximity to the place, some refugees who were given a permit were able to move around a little more freely for the first time in four months and stroll around the place.

Since the steamers were used again by the shipping company and also cost about $ 1,000 a day, they should be withdrawn and the people housed on land. The “Car Dušan” and the “Kraljica Marija” left on May 2, but the “Car Dušan” returned on the evening of the same day. 650 people were accommodated in the village, which had around 2,000 inhabitants and partly consisted of mud huts - mainly families and older, ailing "Chawerim" as well as 18 to 30-year-old members of the Hachshara youth. Some of them were housed in private houses and some in quickly erected barracks. The rest of the Hachshara youth, the members of the youth aliyah and around 80 other people stayed on the converted tugboat and on the "Car Dušan". The Misrachi group stayed on the “Car Nikola” as before. Finally, tents were procured for the youth aliyah so that they could set up camp near the ships. In addition, they were allowed to use a 150 by 350 meter square as exercise space, half of which was prepared as a sports field. In letters to their relatives, the refugees praised the hospitality of the authorities in Yugoslavia and that the population was very decent.

From the spring of 1940, more refugees, some individually, joined the group, which increased to around 1,200 people. In April, for example, a group of 20 Jewish youths from occupied Poland reached the transport - all school friends from Bielitz . They had fled via Russia , Carpathian Ukraine and Hungary in the dead of winter . Among them was Romek Reich, who later married Herta Eisler .

On May 12th, Sime Spitzer and Chief Rabbi David Alcalay came from Belgrade and held a general roll call on the sports field, in which they praised the refugees for their perseverance, encouraged them and assured them that they would still achieve their goal. A tug still to be adapted should reach Kladovo within the next 24 hours in order to take them to the Black Sea after completing the necessary work , where they could board a deep-sea ship in the port of Sulina . Since the Romanian authorities initially refused to hand over the tug and only local representatives of the Jewish community association had to travel to Turnu Severin to negotiate with the authorities, the arrival of the "Penelope" was delayed for a few days. During the renovations between May 21 and 26, tables and benches were set up on the deck and wooden platforms were installed one above the other in the five bunker rooms on four floors. There were also five washrooms for two people each. Those refugees who were housed in Kladovo were only supposed to get on the "Penelope" two hours before departure, the others relocated, and everyone continued to wait for a sign when it would start. There were many rumors that they would be leaving soon, but they were all canceled at the last minute.

An infirmary was set up in the old tug, which was still available as a relief; Medicines for a pharmacy came from Belgrade. While there were mainly flu-like infections, colds and diarrhea in the winter, deficiency diseases due to the low-vitamin diet as well as diseases caused by dirt and vermin on the ships (especially scurvy , scabies and furunculosis ) occurred in the course of the months . Later there were isolated cases of serious infectious diseases such as polio , rot and typhoid , which claimed some lives. The healthy suffered from boredom and from worrying about their relatives, who were scattered all over the world or who were still exposed to the dangers of National Socialism, but above all from waiting in vain for the onward journey and the feeling of being abandoned by the world. Some continued to try to obtain immigration certificates for Palestine through letters.

At the beginning of September 1940 a large illegal transport drove past them: the Storfer transport was the last one that could leave the "Reichsgebiet". The ships “Helios”, “Melk”, “Schönbrunn” and the well known “Uranus” did not stop to pick them up. Many had relatives on the ships and were desperate because they could not make contact with them.

Relocation to Šabac

Because of the beginning of the home campaign in the Reich of the National Socialists, in which Kladovo was intended as a port of call for ships, the refugees finally had to leave the port. But not in the direction you want: On September 17, 1940, upstream of the 300 kilometers of the were moored with a Zugschiff, Save situated town Sabac brought, where they arrived on 22 September.

In Šabac, married couples and the elderly were accommodated in 380 furnished private rooms with locals, while the majority of the young people moved into an abandoned, three-story flour mill. The members of various Zionist youth associations lived in another building, the religious-Zionist Misrachi in a smaller house. In addition to bedrooms, all buildings were equipped with communal kitchens. The center of the camp was a block of buildings in which clothing, material and food magazines were also available and various workshops could be used for retraining courses. The building also contained administrative rooms and the office of a representative of the Jewish community association. In an abandoned sanatorium, nine doctors belonging to the transport and two local Jewish doctors ran their own hospital with 20 beds. Although the Association of Yugoslav Jewish Communities was formally responsible for them, they were largely self-governing.

Moving to Šabac brought more order to the lives of the refugees, they held concerts and lectures, were allowed to move freely in the city until 8 p.m. and were given an exit until midnight once a week. They published newspapers and organized regular school lessons in the Šabac synagogue. They were also able to visit the two cinemas in Šabac and a reading room run by Quakers . Although they were officially not allowed to take on work, some still earned a little pocket money through various jobs with the population, which enabled them to supplement their food rations, which they described as sparse. They continued to ask their relatives by letter to intervene in order to obtain immigration certificates to Palestine or to immigrate to the USA and also contacted the local Palestine offices and the Jewish Agency themselves . Little by little, despite all the setbacks, the confidence that had been there until then turned into hopelessness and despair. Their now worn clothes made them more and more aware of their social decline, they were forced to beg for clothes for the winter.

Mossad agents announced several times that they would continue their journey, the refugees packed up - and after the cancellation, which each time came at the last moment, unloaded again. This was the case with the Darien II, for example, which left Alexandria at the end of September 1940 and arrived in Istanbul in October . It was paid for by American Zionist organizations such as Hadassah . However, the journey to Constana , where it was to be repaired and prepared for transport, did not begin until November 2, as there had been disagreements between the Mossad, the Americans and Spitzer over the settlement of the bill for the necessary coal. The adaptation work should take two to three weeks, after which the "Darien II" should be available for the refugees. The "Darien II" meanwhile brought 160 legal refugees who could pay the full price to Palestine. The background of this company is not known. When she came back to the port of Sulina , the refugees were supposed to leave there on December 2nd and were embarked on tugs in Šabac. Then came the instruction from the shipping company that the departure had to be avoided on the one hand because of the advanced time of the year and on the other hand because of the uncertain political conditions; only an instruction from the highest authorities could change her mind. However, the Yugoslav Prime Minister also declined responsibility for the transport. Spitzer, who since the arrival of the refugees had been trying to find new ways and means for their onward transport, organized a special train to Prahovo in mid-December in order to send them from there to Sulina with Romanian smugglers. However, when the smugglers came with Greek flags, Spitzer saw too great a risk that he did not want to take, as he wrote to Mossad agent Ruth Klüger:

“We are far too responsible an institution for that. [...] In any case, I also had to think that the Romanian authorities could cause difficulties or that the people in Romania would get stuck in the ice. [...] Even a return to Yugoslavia after the people had already been to a foreign object, I would not have been able to enforce. "

The "Darien II" waited in Sulina until December 29, 1940 and then transported other refugees to Palestine, where it was finally confiscated by the British.

In January 1941 around 1,400 people were on the run in Šabac. Those who had found accommodation in private quarters had to move to the mass quarters as the Germans approached and the resulting increasing political pressure.

escape

A few weeks before the German attack on Yugoslavia , a small number of the refugees received certificates from the Youth Alija, the Zionist women's organization WIZO and around 50 individual certificates. The approximately 200 to 280 people (the exact number is not known) consisted mainly of young people between 15 and 17 years of age, some younger children and girls who had already passed the age limit of the youth aliyah, some adult carers in the youth groups and a few older people that relatives had vouched for. They were issued Yugoslav interim passports and had to obtain visas for Greece, Turkey and Syria. WIZO gave the young people new clothes and provided them with food and other things necessary for the trip. From March 16, they left in groups of 30 to 50 people one after the other. The journey of the last group threatened to fail, as it was initially said that all railway wagons were needed for troop mobilization in Yugoslavia; but finally they could drive. In the train stations along the route, Jews who had learned of their passage provided them with food and drink. Because of the bombing of the tracks in Greece and occasional stops due to air raids, the train journey to Istanbul took a week. In Istanbul, the groups met again in a hotel and continued their journey by train via the Syrian city of Aleppo to Beirut . At Rosh HaNikra they reached the Palestinian border. After a stay in a British military detention center, they were distributed to various settlements in the country, mostly kibbutzim , or moved to relatives who were already living in the country. One of the young people rescued, Ernest Löhner, later returned to Yugoslavia with the Hagana and fought as a parachute liaison officer at Tito's headquarters , then rose to the rank of general in the Israeli army.

Belgrade in ruins

In February 1941, the members of the Polish group took the first steps towards their escape. They drove to Belgrade several times individually and without permission, made contacts with the Betar and the Polish consulate, read newspapers and returned to Šabac. When Romek Reich returned with the prospect of Polish passports, he and Herta Eisler married on March 24th so that they could escape together. Romek and Stefan Reich, Hugo Schlesinger and other Poles drove to Belgrade on March 26th to collect the passports - just as chaos broke out because the pro-German government was overthrown as a result of the signing of the Tripartite Pact . Herta Reich received letters from Romek until April 5, after which the connection was broken. After Belgrade was bombed by the German air fleet on April 6, she did not know whether he and the others were still alive. They only met again after the defeat of Yugoslavia, when Romek suddenly stood in front of her on the night of May 1st to pick her up. The Poles had taken 28 blank passports from the consulate, which was found abandoned and unlocked, and forged them. You and Herta Reich managed a dangerous and exhausting escape over the mountains to Italy, where they encountered the doctor Zigmund Levitus, his wife Dorothea and several other Poles who were also part of the Kladovo transport. They reached Palestine with the help of the English in June 1944.

Frieda Fanny Wiener, who came from Breslau , also managed to escape from Šabac. She offered a young Czech woman who wanted to spend the night with her companion in the converted mill, a place to sleep next to her because there was no longer a free bunk. The young woman persuaded them to flee to Bulgaria with them. Frieda Fanny Wiener fell ill with malaria and typhus on the way and was treated in the hospital in Plovdiv . She then spent a long time in Bulgaria, where she was initially safe . When she reached Palestine on November 17, 1944, her arrival was marveled at because no one had expected that another German Jew would be able to escape at that time.

Only less than a quarter of the participants were able to escape at the last moment. Erich Nachheiser (later Ehud Nahir), who was able to leave as the supervisor of a youth alija group, later recalled:

“We had an Austrian mentality. At the time we couldn't imagine forging documents, doing anything that the authorities wouldn't allow, even in order to stay alive; As if in joke, why there was no German revolution after the First World War: the revolutionaries came to the palace of the emperor and there it said: “It is forbidden to walk on the grass.” So they renounced the revolution in order not to break the law to have to. The Poles showed us that they had forged documents, that they crossed borders illegally, things that I would take for granted today. But our mentality was very different back then. We were law abiding. The Poles took the initiative, their vitality was much stronger than ours. "

After the break-up of Yugoslavia

With the invasion of Yugoslavia by Hitler's troops on April 6, 1941, the surrender of Yugoslavia on April 17 and the subsequent break-up of Yugoslavia , the Kladovo refugees were overtaken by their persecutors, from whom they had fled in 1939. Serbia was placed under German military administration, and Šabac became a border town. On April 16, one day before the surrender of Yugoslavia, the commander of the Security Police and SD, Wilhelm Fuchs , ordered his first measures, which also applied to the Kladovo refugees:

Capture of Jews in Belgrade

“All Jews have to report to the municipal police at the fire station on Tas-Majdan on April 19 at 8 a.m. Jews who do not comply with this reporting requirement will be shot. "

Those who registered were obliged to do forced labor . At the same time, the robbery of Jewish property and wild aryanizations began in the Jewish community of Serbia, numbering 23,000. On May 30th, the military commander Ludwig von Schröder issued an ordinance on the Jews, which severely restricted the lives of those affected and required identification, after which they had to wear a yellow ribbon with the inscription "Jew". The Belgrade religious community was replaced by the Gestapo with a "Representation of the Jewish Community of Serbia", of which they made Sime Spitzer its director. Spitzer succeeded in sending a few letters and telegrams to foreign Jewish offices asking for both money and certificates. The responses were disappointing, especially the news of the British ban on entry to Palestine. Since the Germans also forbade emigration in the meantime, there was no longer any possibility even of illegal transport. At the same time, Spitzer received the first reports that there was already mistreatment and murders in concentration camps in Croatia.

Since the population was in a state of shock after the German attack, there were initially no uprisings. In the spring, therefore, the combat troops were withdrawn from Serbia and Wehrmacht occupation divisions were stationed. At Šabac these were the 6th and 8th companies of the 750th Infantry Regiment of the 718th Infantry Division, which consisted mainly of Austrians. On July 20, 1941, the refugees were interned in the Šabac concentration camp, a barrack camp a little north of the city on the Save. They had to put all of their things on trucks and walk. The inmates were assigned to various types of forced labor. From September Felix Benzler demanded the immediate evacuation of the camp and the "swift and draconian settlement of the Jewish question".

Partisan uprisings and their consequences

The partisans led by Josip Broz Tito committed around 100 acts of sabotage between mid-July and August 1941 and were able to take the strategically important city of Užice thanks to an arms factory . By the end of July, the Wehrmacht had lost ten men; in the first ten days of August there were already 22. The chief of the security police and the SD ordered the shooting of hostages and expiatory measures against the civilian population. Since the resistance of the partisans could not be broken, the Wehrmacht commander of Serbia, General Heinrich Danckelmann , requested reinforcement of the troops, but this was rejected due to the need in the east. As a result, “mixed hunting squads” consisting of the security police, SD and Wehrmacht units were set up, with the soldiers being trained in the “fighting methods” of the police and SD.

Hanged hostages in Šabac

Although there had been no uprisings in the city of Šabac so far, the 3rd Company of Police Reserve Battalion 64 arrived to reinforce the three Wehrmacht companies of the 718th Infantry Division. They hung ten hostages in the city on August 18. During a “hunting excursion” that followed the next day about twenty kilometers west of Šabac, around 30 partisans were shot. A policeman and three soldiers died on the German side; ten soldiers were wounded. As a “punitive measure”, around ten to twenty Jews from Šabac were shot the following night. Refugees from the Kladovo group were taken from the camp and forced to demonstratively carry the bodies of the Jews through the city and then hang them up on utility poles. The remaining 63 Jews from Šabac were driven to the concentration camp, in which the Kladovo group was also located. On September 3, Danckelmann stated in a report to the Wehrmacht commander in chief:

"Immediate atonement for acts of sabotage against the German Wehrmacht, in which around 1,000 communists and Jews have been shot or hanged in public so far, and houses burned down by bandits, even an entire village, could not stop the constant growth of the armed uprising. "

In September the resistance struggle intensified, in which the Chetniks now also took part. Partisans and Chetniks controlled all of southern and western Serbia. Wilhelm List , Wehrmacht Commander Southeast responsible for the entire Balkan region, requested reinforcements in the form of a combat division and a general responsible for Serbia. For this post he also proposed Franz Böhme , who, due to his experiences in World War I, was considered an “excellent expert on the Balkans” and who - like other Austrians - harbored personal feelings of revenge due to the defeat at the time. Böhme was appointed Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia and the 12,000-strong 342nd Infantry Division was transferred to Serbia. Böhme received instructions from Hitler to “restore order with the sharpest means”. At the same time, General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel issued an atonement order , according to which 50 to 100 civilian hostages should be shot for every German who fell. According to Keitel, these should come from the ranks of political opponents and be politically and geographically related to the event. Böhme, on the other hand, meant with his order to “clean up the Sava Arch” not only the rebels, but also ordered the arrest of all Jews in Serbia.

On September 23, around 1,000 partisans entered the town of Šabac and initially brought a factory and the power station under their control. This made Šabac the first city occupied by German troops to be attacked by the partisans. The battle for the city, in which a tank was also used on the German side, lasted ten hours. Then the partisans withdrew. That same evening a battalion of the 342nd Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant General Walter Hinghofer advanced . On Boehme's orders, the next day they began arresting all 14 to 70-year-old male residents of the city, even though they were not part of the rebels. Their homes were ransacked and neither weapons nor ammunition could be found. After three days, 4,459 male civilians were gathered in a square to the west of the city. During this action, 75 men from Šabac were shot and five others were reported as "dead". A pioneer battalion of the 342nd Infantry Division began building another concentration camp north of Šabac: the Jarak concentration camp , which was on Croatian soil.

On September 26, 1941, around 5,000 men from the Šabac concentration camp, including the men of the Kladovo transport, ran from parts of the division reserve of the 342nd Infantry Division, including a tank destroyer company and the bicycle squadron, because of beatings and shootings “Resistance” or driven to the Jarak concentration camp because they couldn't go any further. In Klenak , Croatian army members joined the German guards. 80 men were shot dead while this company was being put together, later known as the “blood march”. Of the men on the Kladovo transport, 21 died on the blood march. Finally, the plans were changed because of the militarily unfavorable location of the Jarak concentration camp, which is why the men had to return to Šabac after their arrival at the Jarak concentration camp. The concentration camp there had meanwhile been expanded to include the barracks of an abandoned barracks, which were intended for the civilian population. The men of the Kladovo transport also spent a few days in the barracks until they were transferred back to the “Jewish camp” in the pioneer barracks on October 4th.

The shooting of the men of the Kladovo transport

On October 2, 1941, 21 soldiers were killed in an attack by the partisans on units of the Army Intelligence Regiment near Topola . Böhme then ordered 2,100 prisoners to be selected to be shot. He instructed General Hinghofer's 342nd Infantry Division to carry out the execution and on October 10th he specified his ideas:

"805 Jews and Gypsies are removed from the Šabac camp, the rest from the Jewish transit camp in Belgrade."

Shot prisoner is thrown into the mass grave

On October 11, 1941, all of the men on the Kladovo transport were picked up and handed over to a Wehrmacht unit. Shortly before, the construction of the Zasavica concentration camp was announced, for which a 12 by 3.5 kilometer area, bounded in the north, east and west by the Sava and in the south by a swamp area and the Zasavica river, was planned. So when the men were fetched, many thought it was going to be a labor assignment. The survivor Anna Hecht remembers the day her husband disappeared:

“On October 11, 1941, at six o'clock in the evening, SS men came into the camp and all men had to line up in alphabetical order. At the time my husband was doing a job outside the camp; he was fetched and had to present himself. Then the command was given: "right around!" And you never saw her again. "

The men were driven to Zasavica not knowing that it was their death march. They were shot dead on the Save on October 12th and 13th. Serbian forced laborers previously had to dig a 250 to 300 meter long trench. Around 50 men at a time had to hand over their valuables and stand about one to two meters away from the trench, facing the trench. Two soldiers lined up behind each prisoner and shot him on command. The surviving slave laborer Miloral Mica Jelsić said:

"[...] then the Germans ordered us to search their sacks and take out all valuables such as watches, money and also to take the rings off their hands. [...] Even before they were thrown into the grave, I saw the Germans taking out the golden teeth of the dead and if they couldn't take them out from one of them, they knocked them out with their boot heels. "

After the forced laborers covered them with earth, the next 50 Jews were brought in. The women who remained in the Šabac concentration camp were left completely in the dark about the fate of the men.

With the shootings, a mass murder had begun, in the course of which more than 30,000 people were shot up to the replacement of Boehme in early December 1941. In addition to the men of the Kladovo transport, these included almost all Serbian Jewish men as well as Roma and non-Jewish Serbs. Of the Jewish men, 500 were supposed to stay alive to be used as health and security services in concentration camps.

Women and children in the Sajmište concentration camp

The central tower of the Sajmište concentration camp

At the beginning of January 1942, the 750 to 800 women and children of the Kladovo transport were transferred from the Šabac concentration camp to the Sajmište concentration camp administered by the SS . First they were brought by train to the city of Ruma on Croatian soil , from where they had to walk to the Sajmište concentration camp north of the Save in the Belgrade district of Zemun . On their death march in deep winter, frozen children and old women were left in the snow. In the Sajmište concentration camp, over 5,000 Serbian Jewish women, children and old people crowded into the cold walls of pavilion 3 on a former exhibition center. The Todt Organization failed to get the concentration camp ready in time, even though it had six weeks to spare. When the nearby Belgrade airport was bombed in April 1941, the exhibition center, which opened in 1937, was badly damaged. Apart from two wells, the camp had no sanitary facilities, and the windows were broken. Snow fell through the roof and froze on the concrete floor. Only after some time did the Todt organization set up three-story wooden frames as sleeping places - without blankets, without sheets , only with straw, which was never changed. The inmates received food from the Belgrade Welfare Service - from what was left over after the Belgrade population had been taken care of. On average, that was 80 grams of food per person per day. There was 200 grams of milk per day for each of the 300 small children. Every night between 10 and 25 people died of hunger and cold. The bodies of the deceased had to be dragged across the frozen Sava River by the inmates, where they were placed on wagons by Belgrade community officials and driven to the Jewish cemetery.

The camp hospital was overcrowded, so some sick people were allowed to be transferred to Belgrade hospitals. A servant testified as a witness after the war:

“In the winter of 1941/42 we received a number of new patients: women from Sajmište. With them came children with frostbite. Their nails fell off from hunger and cold. They looked like living skeletons, just skin and bones. Child eyes stared at us from old men's faces. They had nothing in common with children anymore. The women refused to talk about what was going on in Sajmište. "

The person responsible for the camp, head of the Gestapo Lothar Kraus, was replaced by Hans Helm in February 1942, who later testified:

"I did nothing to improve the accommodation, because I was convinced that there was no way."

When the prisoners protested in January because of the unbearable hunger, SS-Sturmführer Stracke threatened that 100 of them would be shot immediately if there were further protests.

In January 1942, shortly before the women and children of the Kladovo transport were transferred, Herbert Andorfer became the commandant of the Sajmište concentration camp. The previous leader, Squad Leader Edgar Enge, was placed at his side as an adjutant. Internally, however, the camp was run by the Jewish camp self-government. According to Andorfer's statements, a close relationship developed between him and the Jewish camp self-government. He drank coffee with them and told them that they would soon be transported on to Romania.

The concentration camp Sajmište was by the German occupiers in Serbia only as a temporary interim solution until the deportation was considered the Jews to the East. At the Wannsee Conference at the end of January 1942, however, it became clear that the deportation of the Serbian Jews was not a priority and that they still had a longer stay in Serbia ahead of them. This was inconvenient for the occupiers for several reasons, not least because the Wehrmacht needed the concentration camp to intern partisans. For the envoy Felix Benzler , it was a question of prestige, as he had been vehemently advocating the deportation since the summer and the Jews were already collected "ready to go".

Murder in the gas truck

Andorfer was probably informed in the first week of March of the delivery of a "special vehicle" in which the Jews were to be "put to sleep". He forged a plan to ensure that the gassings ran smoothly. By means of attacks, he announced in the camp that there would be a stopover in a new, better camp on Serbian soil for the time being. When asked for details, he responded with a fictitious camp order for the new camp, which he also hung up. He assured them that each transport would be accompanied by a Jewish doctor and nurse who would take care of their health along the way. Assuming that their situation could only improve, the inmates looked forward to the resettlement. The Jewish camp management was responsible for putting together the transports, and the death row inmates volunteered. According to a survivor, Andorfer advised them to only take the most valuable things with them, as the food in the new camp would be very good.

From March 19 to May 10, 1942, from Monday to Saturday, a smaller truck arrived every morning, into which the luggage was loaded, and the gray-painted gas truck into which the respectively assembled group of 50 to 80 people, unsuspectingly, got into . One of the drivers was distributing sweets to the children. When everyone was inside the car, the double door was bolted behind them. The gas truck drove across the Sava Bridge, followed by the smaller truck and a car in which Andorfer and his adjutant Enge were sitting. Since the concentration camp was on the Croatian side of the Save, they had to pass a Croatian border post; However, special papers helped them to continue their journey unhindered. Then the little truck turned off and brought the luggage to the Belgrade depot of the National Socialist People's Welfare .

During a brief stop, one of the drivers of the gas truck threw a lever, which led the exhaust gases into the car. So the car drove across Belgrade and on to a shooting range located around 15 kilometers south-east near Avala (according to another source near Jajinci in the Voždovac district ). Pits had already been dug there by a prisoner detachment. Another inmate squad had to get the bodies out of the car and bury them in the pit. Finally, the men of the “grave digging squads” were shot with machine guns and also thrown into the mass grave. Edgar Enge testified at his trial in the 1960s:

“After opening the door it was found that the corpses were usually more in the back of the car. The inmates then transported the bodies into the pits and then covered them with earth. […] I never noticed any signs of life in the gassed people. The faces were pale in appearance. The gas truck was not significantly dirty in either case. Essentially, all you could see was vomit in the car. No doctor was present at the funeral. Nor was it established in detail whether the gassed Jews were really dead. "

In November 1943, when the German defeat was on the horizon, the Sonderkommando 1005 under Paul Blobel began to dig up the corpses buried on the firing range, to lay them up in stake and to burn them. This lasted four months and was used as a cover-up.

In May 1942 there were still a few survivors of the Kladovo transport, together with a group of German-speaking Jews from the Banat , in the Sajmište concentration camp. They were meant to clean the camp. When they finished, most of them were shot. Only a handful survived, mostly non-Jewish women married to Jews who were released for the promise of secrecy. Of the Jewish refugees last housed in Šabac, only Dorothea Fink survived as an Aryan and Borika Wettendorfer, who had already used the permit for an eye operation in Belgrade to flee at the end of November 1941.

Work-up

The fate of the participants in the Kladovo transport was only partially known after the war. After 1945 the relatives received the information that all participants in the transport had been shot in autumn 1941. Many of these relatives never found out that the women and children were in the Sajmište concentration camp and ultimately perished in the gas truck. Even 50 years later, not all of the details of the events were known. Gabriele Anderl and Walter Manoschek reconstructed the event using files, statements from survivors, witnesses and members of the Wehrmacht, as well as surviving letters and diaries from the participants. They published the results in 1993 in the book Failed Escape. The Jewish “Kladovo Transport” . As early as 1992, Anderl reported on the Kladovo transport in her article Emigration and Displacement , which appeared in Erika Weinzierl's book Displacement and New Beginning . The Serbian Jew Zeljko Dragic came across the three excursion boats while researching his dissertation on the relationship of the Serbian Orthodox Church to Judaism in the 20th century and had the idea for an exhibition that was shown in the Burgenland-Croatian center in Vienna in 2012. For this he collected further material and spent a week with contemporary witnesses from Israel in Serbia.

Memorial sites and events, artistic debate

In Jerusalem , the Israeli government established the Forest of Martyrs to commemorate the Holocaust victims, where there is also a memorial plaque for the victims of the Kladovo transport.

Serbia

In 2002 , the Jewish Community of Vienna had a memorial for 800 Austrian Jews on the transport erected at the Jewish cemetery in Belgrade .

A week of commemoration for the Kladovo transport was first held in Serbia from October 14-20, 2002. The organizers were the Association of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, the Jewish Museum Belgrade and the embassies of Germany and Austria. As part of the commemoration week in Kladovo on October 16, 2002, a memorial designed by Mimi Bihaly-Vuckovic for the victims of the transport was unveiled. Since then, Remembrance Week has taken place every year in Kladovo.

In Zasavica, in memory of the blood march and its victims in the 1980s, a marathon was held every year under the title Pojedinačno prvenstvo Jugoslavije u maratonu i brzom hodanju (Yugoslav individual championship in marathon running and walking ). The marathon no longer exists, the Jewish communities of Serbia continue to meet every year on the Day of the Victims in Zasavica at the monument erected there for the victims of the Kladovo transport and read the Kaddish prayer.

In her cycle of pictures Nada je zauvek ostala na Dunavu (Hope has stayed on the Danube forever) the Belgrade artist Mirjana Lehner-Dragić symbolized the disappearance of the Kladovo refugees “in an apparently simple way of painting”.

On April 22, 1995, the “Memorial Day of the Victims of the Genocide”, a memorial by the sculptor Miodrag Popović for the victims of the Sajmište concentration camp was unveiled on the bank of the Sava in Belgrade. The ten meter high, abstract composition made of bronze stands outside the camp boundary so that it can be seen from the bridge and the fortress.

Austria

The exhibition "Kladovo - An Escape to Palestine" took place in the Jewish Museum Vienna from July 8 to November 4, 2001. The basis of the exhibition were photos that were taken by participants in the transport during the escape and that survivor Ehud Nahir illegally took with him to Palestine. In addition, original documents and a film by photographer Alisa Douer were shown, which dealt with the lives of survivors of the transport. The film was produced with the support of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism . The exhibition was supplemented by a bilingual booklet. Alisa Douer and Reinhard Geir were the exhibition curators. The contemporary witness Chaim Schatzker also took part in the opening matinee .

From September 13 to October 14, 2012, the Burgenland-Croatian Center in Vienna presented the exhibition The Journey into Eternity. 70 years of Kladovo Transport . The exhibition was organized by the monthly magazine KOSMO in cooperation with Yad Vashem ; Željko Dragić was the project manager and published a trilingual booklet in German, English and Serbian. He hoped that this would address the younger generation from the Balkans in particular. From the fact that people from ex-Yugoslavia vote for the FPÖ , he concludes that they know little about the time of the Nazi regime when their grandparents were killed.

To date (2016), official Austria has not erected a memorial for those murdered on the Kladovo transport, although the majority of the victims were Austrians - and so were the perpetrators.

The search for guilt

The question of who was to blame for the failure of the escape company still preoccupies survivors and the relatives of the victims, but also historians. Many see the responsibility with Sime Spitzer and his decision in December 1940 in Prahovo not to let people fly under the Greek flag. Like most of Serbia's male Jewish population, 47-year-old Sime Spitzer did not survive 1941 - although he himself had a certificate. There were also allegations that the Jewish communities of Yugoslavia had enriched themselves from financial grants from abroad - in particular three fundraising campaigns by American associations. The survivor Erich Feier, who was able to flee from Šabac, reported a rumor circulating in 1940/1941 that wealthy Yugoslav Jews had used certain donations for the group to transfer their assets abroad. Celebration emphasized that this rumor could never be dispelled. Gabriele Anderl and Walter Manoschek counter that the Yugoslav population raised large sums of money for the refugees. The fact that no one, especially the British mandate in Palestine, wanted to accept the refugees and the British also put pressure on the Danube countries not to issue transit visas is one of the problems that ultimately led to the failure of the transport.

Others, like the survivor and historian Chaim Schatzker , see the main blame on the Mossad and the failures of the Zionist officials. For example, he accuses them of the fact that the "Darien II" was lying unused in the port for two months, "while the Mossad was discussing an insane secret service plan with the Hagana Jewish underground army". The Hagana and the British planned a sabotage action against the National Socialists, so it was ultimately a question of whether short-term goals such as the rescue of the Kladovo refugees were not behind long-term goals, such as cooperation with the British and the hope that many Jews would end up after the war Receiving entry certificates would have to stand back.

However, when it comes to these questions, it must not be forgotten where the main culprit lies: All those involved ultimately only reacted to the situation created by the terror regime of National Socialism.

Legal prosecution

  • Herbert Andorfer was put out to be wanted in 1966 and was arrested in Munich in 1967. He was handed over to Austrian authorities and a short time later extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 1968 for aiding and abetting murder.
  • Franz Böhme committed suicide before his trial in 1947.
  • Edgar Enge was also tried in Germany in 1968. He was found guilty of aiding and abetting murder, but no punishment was given.

literature

  • Gabriele Anderl, Walter Manoschek: Failed escape. The Jewish “Kladovo Transport” on the way to Palestine 1939–42 . Publishing house for social criticism, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85115-179-8 .
  • Željko Dragić: The Journey into Eternity. 70 years of Kladovo Transport. Putovanje u večnost. 70 godina Kladovo transporta . Twist Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-200-02824-1 (German, Serbian, English).
  • Alisa Douer on behalf of the Jewish Museum Vienna (Ed.): Kladovo - A flight to Palestine / Escape to Palestine . Mandelbaum Verlag , Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85476-044-2 (publication in German and English accompanying the exhibition Kladovo - A Flight to Palestine, Jewish Museum Vienna, July 8 to November 4, 2001).
  • Erika Weinzierl , Otto D. Kulka (Hrsg.): Expulsion and a new beginning. Israeli citizens of Austrian origin . Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-205-05561-6 .
  • Walter Manoschek: “Serbia is free of Jews”. Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 . 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-56137-5 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Miriam Breuer: The Kladowo Transport . Contemporary witness report, in: Andreas Lixl-Purcell (Ed.): Recollections of German-Jewish Women 1900–1990 . Leipzig: Reclam, 1992, ISBN 3-379-01423-0 , pp. 204-208.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac Gabriele Anderl, Walter Manoschek: Failed Flucht. The Jewish “Kladovo Transport” on the way to Palestine 1939–42 . Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-85115-179-8 (17-21 (section background), 18 (quotation Weingarten); 22-23, 49 (organization); 48-57 (from Vienna to Bratislava); 61 –62 (quotation and descriptions by Jacobs); 57–101 (The time in Kladovo); 145–173 (relocation to Šabac), 174–178 + 290 (Darien II and background), 178 (quotation from Spitzer to Klüger); 183 ( Quote Nachheiser); 184–188 (certificates), 189–199 (escape Herta Reich & Co), 199–201 (Frieda Fanny Wiener); 202–211 (after the defeat of Yugoslavia); 201–224 (partisan uprisings and their consequences) , 215 (quotation from Danckelmann); 224–229 (the shooting of the men of the Kladovo transport), 226 (quotations from Böhme and Anna Hecht), 228 (quotation from Jelsić); 234–240 (women and children in Sajmište concentration camp), 236 ( Hospital employee quote), 235 (helmet quote); 240–250 (murder in a gas truck) 248 (Enge quote); 250–253 (processing); 250 (legal prosecution)).
  2. ^ Gabriele Anderl: Generation Conflicts. The Zionist emigration from Austria to Palestine in the interwar period . In: Frank Stern, Barbara Eichinger (ed.): Vienna and the Jewish experience 1900–1938. Acculturation - Anti-Semitism - Zionism . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78317-6 , p. 79, 81 ( boehlau-verlag.com [PDF; 26.6 MB ]).
  3. ↑ Gabriele Anderl: Examples of illegal transports. The "Kladovo Transport" . In: Erika Weinzierl , Otto D. Kulka (Ed.): Expulsion and new beginnings. Israeli citizens of Austrian origin . Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-205-05561-6 , p. 298, 303 .
  4. ↑ a b Ženi Lebl: Tragedija Transporta Kladovo Sabac. El mundo sefarad, 1997, accessed on April 5, 2016 (Serbian, 1st place in the 41st competition of the Federation of Jewish Congregations of Yugoslavia).
  5. ↑ Herta Reich : Two days. Escape, expulsion and the traces of Jewish life in Mürzzuschlag . Ed .: Heimo Gruber, Heimo Halbrainer. Clio, Graz 2014, ISBN 978-3-902542-37-3 , pp.  42, 46 .
  6. ^ Walter Manoschek: "Serbia is free of Jews". Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 . 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-56137-5 , p. 57–63 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ It could no longer be determined which Wehrmacht unit it was. At this time the 342nd Infantry Division was deployed in the Cer Mountains (around 35 km southwest of Šabac). Gabriele Anderl and Walter Manoschek suspect (pages 226-227) that these were companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 750th IR, which had been stationed in Šabac since the 342nd Infantry Division withdrew. The attempt to clarify this question at the “ Eichenlaub meeting” of the 750th ID in June 1989 in Innsbruck also failed.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Željko Dragić: The Journey into Eternity. 70 years of Kladovo Transport. Putovanje u večnost. 70 godina Kladovo transporta . Twist Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-200-02824-1 , p. 23–27 (German, Serbian, English).
  9. ↑ a b Aleksandar Nećak: The end of hope . In: Željko Dragić (ed.): The journey into eternity. 70 years of Kladovo Transport. Putovanje u večnost. 70 godina Kladovo transporta . Twist Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-200-02824-1 , p. 93–95 (German, Serbian, English).
  10. ↑ Milan Koljanin: Brief Chronology 1937-1944. In: Visit to Staro Sajmište. Nazi Concentration Camp Sajmište - a multimedia research. Dirk Auer, Rena Rädle, accessed on April 13, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Escape from Vienna - into a trap: The journey into eternity. Die Presse, September 11, 2012, accessed on April 13, 2016 .
  12. ↑ a b c Stefan Beig: Hope died last. Wiener Zeitung, September 11, 2012, accessed on April 13, 2016 .
  13. ↑ 70 godina - Kladovo Transport - Neuspelo Bekstvo u Palestinu. Centar za kulturu Kladovo, April 28, 2012, accessed April 16, 2016 (Serbian).
  14. ↑ Serbia: Commemoration of Kladovo Transport. derStandard.at, October 13, 2002, accessed on April 13, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Izložba slika Mirjane Lehner-Dragić. Centar za kulturu Kladovo, April 29, 2012, accessed April 13, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Petar Atanacković, Nataša Lambić, Ilija Malović: Places of Terror and the Anti-Fascist Struggle in Belgrade 1941-44. A handbook for the city. Rena Rädle, Milovan Pisarri, 2012, accessed April 19, 2016 (Serbian).
  17. ↑ Kladovo. An escape to Palestine. Jewish Museum Vienna, 2001, accessed on April 16, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Kladovo: An Escape to Palestine. haGalil, April 22, 2003, accessed April 16, 2016 .
  19. ↑ a b Alisa Douer: List of survivors . In: Kladovo. A flight to Palestine (publication accompanying the exhibition "Kladovo - A flight to Palestine") . Mandelbaum Verlag , Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85476-044-2 , p. 6-7 .
  20. ↑ Judith Brandner: The end of the eight hundred. The Gazette , August 8, 2001, accessed April 9, 2016 .