Lost train

Jewish memorial in Schipkau (2007)

The lost train , the lost transport or the train of the lost is the last of three trains that were used to transport prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Nazi era in the final phase of World War II when British troops approached the camp . For this purpose, between April 6 and 11, 1945, three transport trains with a total of around 6,800 people called " exchange Jews " by the SS , de facto hostages , were assembled and taken to departure. Their destination was to be the Theresienstadt concentration camp on the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

The last of these three trains, originally with 2,400 prisoners, finally stopped after an odyssey through still unoccupied parts of Germany near the Brandenburg town of Tröbitz on the open route . On April 23, 1945 advancing Red Army troops found the train and freed the prisoners from the wagons . About 200 of them did not survive the trip. In the weeks that followed, another 320 people died from the aftermath of transporting deaths from an epidemic .

chronology

Traditional route of the train
April 10, 1945 Bergen-Belsen April 11, 1945 Soltau Muenster Uelzen 14./15. April 1945 Luneburg April 15, 1945 Lauenburg April 15, 1945 Books April 15, 1945 Hagenow Land April 15, 1945 Ludwigslust April 16, 1945 Wittenberg 17./18. April 1945 Nauen April 18, 1945 Berlin-Spandau April 18, 1945 Berlin-Baumschulenweg King Wusterhausen Luebben Luebbenau Senftenberg 19. – 20. April 1945 Schipkau 20./21. April 1945 Finsterwalde Doberlug-Kirchhain 20./21. April 1945 Tröbitz (passage) 20.-22. April 1945 Langennaundorf April 23, 1945 Tröbitz (pulled back)

The three transports

The Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , had ordered in March 1944 that in the event of the enemy advancing on the concentration camps, these should be evacuated under the direction of regional, higher SS and police leaders. When approaching enemy forces were concentration camp prisoners by the SS to death marches forced or partly carried away with trains to other places and camps. One of the destinations was Bergen-Belsen, which was soon completely overcrowded.

Selected Jewish prisoners had been interned in this camp since 1943 - some with the entire family - if they were citizens of neutral or opposing states or had special ties to them. As interned "exchange Jews", they should be triggered against German civil internees or through payment of foreign currency and bring about the good behavior of neutral states. When the British troops approached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the district of Celle , three trains with around 45 wagons (some older third- class passenger cars , some freight wagons ) were put together for these 6,800 people from April 6 to 11, 1945 , to transport them to the concentration camp Theresienstadt to convict. An evacuation of the entire camp was not planned: with the consent of Himmler, a local armistice was reached on April 12, 1945 , and the overcrowded camp was handed over to the British Army on April 15, 1945 .

The first of these transports with 2500 people left on April 6, 1945 from the camp train station in Bergen-Belsen. His route ran south and west of the Elbe via Uelzen, Salzwedel and Stendal . Another transport with 179 people the following day was connected to the first transport. On April 13, 1945 he was liberated by American troops near the towns of Farsleben and Zielitz near Magdeburg .

A second transport train with 1712 people, in which there were mainly Hungarian Jews , left Bergen-Belsen on April 9, 1945 and, after a two-week journey, reached Terezín / Theresienstadt concentration camp on April 21, 1945. The further fate of those evacuated is not known. The Theresienstadt concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army on May 8, 1945 .

Journey of the lost train from Bergen-Belsen to Tröbitz

The last of these three death trains with 2,400 people was assembled on April 9, 1945 at the camp station with 24 older third-class passenger cars and 22 freight cars and left the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was contaminated with typhus , on the night of April 11, 1945 , just five days before its liberation. There were Jewish men, women and children from more than twelve nations on the train.

An agonizing journey began through large parts of the still unoccupied Germany. The transport set off first via Soltau , Lüneburg and Büchen , then towards Berlin , where it arrived on April 18, 1945. From Berlin-Spandau the train went via Siemensstadt-Fürstenbrunn and the Südring to Neukölln and via the connecting line in the direction of Berlin-Baumschulenweg . The crossing of the badly destroyed Berlin took more than a day. From here he drove further south on the Berlin – Görlitz railway line via Königs Wusterhausen , Lübben and Lübbenau to Senftenberg . The train drove on the Schippchenbahn to Schipkau , where it had a two-day stopover near the Berlin-Dresden autobahn and the journey seemed almost over because of the front approaching from the east, only thirty kilometers away. Then it went via Finsterwalde and Doberlug-Kirchhain towards Falkenberg .

In the last days of the war the train drove through the increasingly narrow unoccupied corridor in Central Germany . During his journey, he was attacked by low-flying aircraft with machine gun fire and bombs, which also resulted in deaths on the train. The train driver then ordered the wagons to be covered with all white sheets and cloths that could be found (see parliamentary flag ).

Three times during the journey there was a meeting with the second transport train, the route of which was identical until shortly before Berlin: the first time near Lüneburg , then near Hagenow and on April 17th shortly before Berlin . The previous night, the second train was badly hit in an air raid , resulting in over 50 deaths and around 250 injuries among its occupants.

The third and last transport train came through the disastrous sanitary and hygienic conditions finally to a typhus - epidemic among weakened and sometimes seriously ill prisoners. Many died of disease or starvation while driving. When the train stopped, the car doors were opened, the dead unloaded and buried next to the tracks .

On 20 or 21 April, 1945, the train rolled, fluttered in the white flags towards Falkenberg / Elster by Tröbitz and stopped in front of the now demolished Elster bridge near the village Langennaundorf at kilometer 101.6 are. On April 22, 1945, 16 dead were buried there in a collective grave. A memorial was erected on the site in 1989.

On the morning of April 23, 1945, the advancing troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army found the transport not far from Tröbitz at kilometer 106.7. The divided train had been brought there the day before with a small locomotive from the Beutersitzer lignite works at the request of the Wehrmacht , since fighting was expected on the nearby Reichsstrasse 101 and some of the guards were already heading towards the locomotive that was pushing the train Doberlug-Kirchhain had dropped off. The Russian soldiers were faced with a terrible picture, as the dead lay in many of the wagons among survivors. 28 people were buried on the spot. In the end, 198 people died during the journey.

The time after liberation

The survivors of the transport continued to suffer even after the liberation. The seriously ill initially stayed on the train, which was relocated again on April 24, 1945 to the block at the Hansa mine at kilometer 108.9, as it was the shortest route from here to Tröbitzer Nordfeld, where a makeshift hospital was set up. Another 26 people who have since died were buried here on the embankment.

The mining community of Tröbitz, with its 700 inhabitants at the time, suddenly saw around 2000 starving, terminally ill people who had to be helped quickly. Many Troebitzers provided help, and members of the Red Army initiated measures to alleviate the plight of the people and to prevent the typhus epidemic, which was already active on the train, from spreading. The Soviet occupation forces set up their headquarters in a building on Tröbitzer Hauptstrasse.

Those survivors of the transport who were still strong enough formed a committee which organized the distribution of the food supplied by the Red Army and the accommodation in a former barrack camp for slave labor, the Nordfeld, as well as the burials at various grave sites. The hospital set up in Nordfeld was headed by Soviet doctors. Jewish doctors - up to now prisoners themselves - helped with the care and treatment of the sick. Some fell ill themselves and died, as the name boards in the Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz show. Local girls and women were employed as caregivers.

“The 'hospital' was incredibly dirty and neglected. The weakened people lay on the floor of a large room and no one knew where to get mattresses or beds. "

- Renata Laqueur

It took eight weeks for the typhoid epidemic to stall. By then, another 320 men, women and children had died. Among them were 26 Troebitzers who had become infected. The last dead person on the transport, the Dutchwoman Klara Miller, was buried on June 21, 1945 in the Jewish cemetery.

Two former prisoners, Menachem and Mirjam Pinkhof, who survived the transport, set off on bicycles in Tröbitz on May 13, 1945 to return to their Dutch homeland. Even before they crossed the Dutch border on June 9, 1945, on May 18, 1945 in Delitzsch, Saxony , they handed the Americans a memorandum for the Foreign Ministry in The Hague , in which they reported on the third train and the condition of those who had been rescued. It was through them that the western allies learned of the "lost transport" from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. American liaison officers then contacted Soviet army offices and drove to Tröbitz to check the truth and to initiate repatriation . The repatriation of the survivors began on June 16, 1945 before the end of the four-week quarantine . By the end of August 1945, all but one family had left the place.

Fates

Survivors

Some of the survivors later reported on their experiences or came back to Tröbitz, the place of liberation. The contact person here was mostly Erika Arlt (1926–2015) from Tröbitz, who often offered hospitality to those who traveled far. For many years she researched the fate of the people on the death train and published an informative paper on it in the mid-1990s. On 2 June 1997 it was amended by Federal President Roman Herzog , the Federal Cross of Merit awarded. Arlt's husband Richard was also heavily involved in researching and documenting the events until his death.

Some of the survivors are:

• Menachem and Mirjam Pinkhof - they handed over the memorandum to the Foreign Office in The Hague.
• The sisters Hannah (a school friend of Anne Frank ) and "Gabi" Rachel Goslar - they later came to Switzerland with the help of Otto Heinrich Frank .
• Renata Laqueur - Ernst Laqueur's daughter, who died in 2011, was a linguist and literary scholar.
• Richard Bleiweiß - he visited the Langennaundorf Memorial in 1993.
• Abel J. Herzberg - the Dutch lawyer and writer published the book Mesopotamia in 1950 , in which he reported about his experiences in Bergen-Belsen. He died in Amsterdam in 1989.
• Jupp Weiss - the Jewish elder from Bergen-Belsen smuggled the many lists of names from the Bergen-Belsen camp, through which the fate of Anne Frank and her sister Margot became known. His wife Erna died of typhus a few weeks after the liberation.
• Ernst Leffmann - the German lawyer fled to Arnhem in 1933 . He and his family were arrested there in 1943 and first deported to Westerbork transit camp and later to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He and his family survived the train ride and returned to Arnhem after the liberation.

Statements about life on the train

“The car I was in seemed to be a converted freight car. The windows opened a little and he had a toilet. Fifty-seven people were crammed into what was known as an 'ambulance'. Here lay patients with typhus, pleurisy ( pleurisy ), open, festering wounds and TBC . All more or less disfigured by edema , all completely lousy. Thirty of us could lie on the floor with our knees drawn up, the remaining twenty-seven had to sit. "

- Renata Laqueur

“The night is hell. [...] The already not insignificant aggressiveness becomes even greater. Sixty-two people have to live and sleep in our wagon, which has 48 seats. We got margarine last night. A whole pound for four people and for four days. That is quite a lot and we are not dissatisfied. "

- Abel J. Herzberg

“When the train stopped, people who were still strong enough were allowed out to drink water from the river. My mother remembers that she took a pot and used it to collect the water from the locomotive. This pot had also been used for other purposes. And whenever the train stopped, the dead were buried along the rails. "

- Marion Blumenthal-Lazan

Felix Hermann Oestreicher described the mood immediately after the liberation with the following verse in his diary :

In peace - April 1945
Very slowly we creep along ,
Very slowly joy of peace does
not arise in us. For too long we have been
enslaved and depressed in battle, We have
not yet forgotten the labor,
hunger, dirt, the bad bed.
But we see a familiar face.
Then our silent greeting smiles:
You're still alive! That's nice, very nice.

dead

Overall, the third and last removal of prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with the lost train claimed over 550 deaths. They came from Albania , France , Yugoslavia , Poland , Paraguay , Montenegro , Ecuador , Greece , the Netherlands , Peru , El Salvador , Hungary and Germany. Some were stateless . They were buried in the places of today's memorials or simply near the railroad tracks. Some of the dead were later reburied. The exact number of victims will probably never be known.

The Jewish-Dutch association politician and journalist Werner Levie (born March 27, 1903) lived before his departure to Holland in 1939 in Berlin and participated in the public and cultural life, among others, as co-founder of the Berlin Jewish newspaper and general secretary of the National Federation of Jewish culture societies in Germany some . Levie was held in the Dutch camp Westerbork with his wife and two daughters from June 1943 and transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1944. Werner Levie died of typhus on May 26, 1945 in Tröbitz after the train ride.

The director of the Apeldoornsche Bosch clinic in Apeldoornsche Bosch , Jacques Lobstein and his wife Alegonda also came from the Netherlands . Het Apeldoornsche Bosch was a psychiatric clinic for Jewish patients in existence since 1908 , which was forcibly dissolved in January 1943 and almost all of which were more than 1,200 patients and nurses murdered in the course of the Holocaust . The Lobsteins died like Leo de Wolff (member of the Amsterdam Jewish Council ) in April / May 1945 in Tröbitz.

Rabbi Zvi Koretz , the former chief rabbi of Thessaloniki in Greece, was among the dead . His role as president of the Salonika Judenrat during the deportation of the local Jewish community in March / April 1943 is controversial. He was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in August 1943. He was one of the prisoners who were to be transported to Theresienstadt in April 1945 and ended up as an inmate of the Lost Train in Tröbitz, where he died of typhus on June 3, 1945, shortly after his rescue.

Commemoration and reappraisal

Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz , memorial stone

Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz, memorial wall with name plaques

Holocaust memorial
in Tröbitz , access u. Overall system

Holocaust memorial
in Tröbitz, German memorial plaque

Holocaust memorial
in Tröbitz, Hebrew memorial plaque

Langennaundorf memorial at km 101.6

Memorial stone at the railway kilometer 101.6

Left name board at track kilometer 101.6

Right nameplate at track kilometer 101.6

Access to the memorial stone at kilometer 106.7 near Wildgrube

Memorial stone at the railway kilometer 106.7 near Wildgrube

The four remaining grave sites in Schilda

Memorials in Tröbitz

As early as the summer of 1945 there were proposals and first activities to build a memorial for the victims of the lost train. The Jewish survivors made suggestions for the inscriptions on the tablets of the mass graves , which, however, did not get the approval of the Soviet commanders.

Due to the high number of victims, Tröbitz became the end point of the journey and, with the graves and memorials that were later built there, became the main place of remembrance of the lost train. Relatives of the dead from different countries come to visit, place small stones at the grave sites according to Jewish custom and say a prayer.

The Jewish cemetery

The Jewish cemetery established in 1945 is located immediately behind the right wall of the Christian cemetery in Tröbitz. There, 125 victims from the Lost Train who had died in the houses of the village found their final resting place. In 1947, on behalf of the French reburial mission, 43 of the dead buried there were exhumed and transferred to their home countries. The remaining graves received grave slabs with the names and dates of the dead and were framed. In 1966 the Jewish cemetery was redesigned by master gardener Manfred Rautenstrauch from Finsterwalde (as his masterpiece ). On September 4, 1966, the cemetery was declared a memorial and a Jewish cemetery of honor and inaugurated by rabbis. Two stars of David mark the entrance gate to the cemetery in Tröbitz.

A memorial stone made of sandstone for the occasion says:

"In memory of the Jewish men and women who succumbed to murderous fascism in Tröbitz in 1945, this stone was placed as a warning to the living."

In Israel , the organization "The Lost transportation, Victims Memorial Society founded; Bergen Belsen-Tröbitz (1945) ”. Their goal was to erect a memorial wall at the Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz, on which all known names of the dead on the transport should be shown. A stone mason from Jerusalem made black granite slabs with a total of over 550 known names, and these were attached to the 10 m long wall erected in Tröbitz. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Lost Transport, it was unveiled on April 27, 1995 during a memorial ceremony attended by over 200 relatives and survivors. In addition, a memorial exhibition with photos, letters and descriptions of the place was shown in the Tröbitz parish office, which was prepared and organized by students from the Finsterwalder Sängerstadt-Gymnasium as part of a project . The journalist Hans-Jürgen Hermel accompanied one of the groups of visitors with his camera and conducted interviews with survivors, contemporary witnesses and Erika Arlt. In 1999 he published the documentary The Lost Train. On the wheels of the Reichsbahn through hell .

On the tablets in German and Hebrew it says:

As a reminder and in eternal memory of the victims of the “Lost Transport” April 10, 1945 Beginning of the odyssey on the ramp of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Almost 2500 people huddled together on the train for 13 days Over 100 victims buried along the railroad tracks April 23, 1945 Liberated by the “Red Army” in Tröbitz many rescued people were no longer granted freedom and peace. Last rest in the mass grave Langennaundorf-Mühlberg-Riesa-Schilda-Schipkau Wildgrube-Zeithain Memorial Tröbitz May souls be bound in the bond of eternal life

What we hear and experience We do not want to hide what our fathers told us from their children, but rather tell the coming generation to make known to their sons so that they may recognize the coming generation, the future sons Psalm 78

Holocaust memorial next to the Protestant church

In 1952 a memorial and memorial was built next to the Protestant church in Tröbitz, which was inaugurated on April 11th as a memorial to the Holocaust. There are a total of 160 dead, of which 134 come from a mass grave in a pit on Nordfeld, and 26 from a mass grave at the block site of the Hansa pit. These corpses were exhumed and reburied in 1951.

The center of the complex is a plaque on a brick wall with the following inscription:

"We honor you / Our dead / The standard-bearers / Nameless comrades"

In 1995 two boards in German and Hebrew were added, which are left and right of a small path that leads to the memorial wall and next to which the dead rest. The German-language plaque of the Holocaust memorial can be read:

"160 Jewish victims of the lost transport from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 rest here"

Further memorials in Tröbitz

The exhibition “Hall of Remembrance” was created as part of an ABM project and opened at the Tröbitzer School at the end of 1998. After the school had become privately owned, the Tröbitz congregation acquired the building of the former New Apostolic Church, built in 1978, to which the exhibition, which contains numerous pictures, documents, documents and exhibits, moved at the end of 2008.

There is also another memorial stone for the victims of the lost train at Tröbitzer Nordfeld.

Jewish memorial in Schipkau

On April 25, 2003, a grave site with a stone in memory of the Jewish victims was inaugurated near Schipkau , where the train stopped for two days. 51 dead were buried near the community in April 1945. These tombs were later described by a Dutchman who made a list of the dead:

1. "The dead with the numbers 62 to 85 are on the Senftenberg - Schipkau section 300 meters from the railway bridge in the village of Schipkau, on the south side of the railway tracks about 30 meters from the switch."
2. “The dead with the numbers 86 to 102 in the same place about 350 meters from the railway bridge. This is about the crossroads, located on the Reichsautobahn Dresden - Berlin. "
3. "The dead with the numbers 103 to 112 are buried in front of Schipkau on the north side of the railroad tracks about 350 meters from the tunnel, four meters from the railroad track on the edge of the bush."

Langennaundorf memorial

The Langennaundorf memorial is located in the forest directly on the embankment kilometer stone 101.6 of the Cottbus - Falkenberg / Elster railway line . There the train stopped on April 20, 1945 in front of the Elster Bridge, which had been destroyed by an air raid. 16 dead from the train were buried in a mass grave next to the tracks. The memorial for the Jewish victims of fascism was inaugurated on April 23, 1989.

A large natural stone reads:

"In honorable memory / the Jewish victims / fascism / April 22, 1945"

Wildgrube Memorial

In 1975 a memorial stone was erected near Wildgrube at the railway kilometer 106.7, where a mass grave is located. Residents had only reported in 1974 that they had allegedly buried 17 dead from the train in the snow forest there at the end of April 1945 on the instructions of the Red Army. The spot was then marked with field stones and then forgotten for decades. According to lists of names found later, however, there are 28 people who are buried there.

The memorial stone reads:

"IN REMEMBRANCE / OF THE RESTING HERE / 17 JEWISH CITIZENS / WHO BECOME A VICTIM / OF FASCHISM"

Schilda, Riesa and Mühlberg

In the neighboring village of Schilda in Tröbitz , 11 people from the lost train were buried, who died after the liberation as a result of the transport. In 1951, six Dutch and one Englishman were exhumed and transferred to their home countries. What remains are the graves of two Hungarian Jews, one Hungarian Jew and one stateless Jew. On their graves are so-called pillow stones, which are provided with the names and dates of those buried there (Hedwig Aschner, Gisela Deutsch, Seron Gros, Kornelia Heumann).

In Riesa , Saxony, there are the graves of 15 people who were brought to the local hospital after the train was liberated and died.

At that time, near the Brandenburg town of Mühlberg , there was a military hospital set up for the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag IV B , which was also liberated and located on the Neuburxdorfer Flur , to which some of the survivors were brought after the liberation. Those who died there, whose names and dates were inaccurately registered, are lying in a collective grave with prisoners of war and German war victims. A man now living in Israel, who survived the Lost Transport as a child, visited the memorial site in 1998 and had a sandstone plaque placed for his deceased mother there, with the inscription under a Star of David:

"Louise Asscher, born Van Geldern: Bergen-Belsen-Tröbitz-Stalag IV B"

Other memorials and grave sites

Other victims were buried in Zeithain, Saxony, and along the route of the train in Brandenburg and Lower Saxony:

• Bergen-Belsen warehouse station
• Soltau – Munster railway line at kilometer 17.4 - 3 unknown dead rest on the Hötzingen-Stübeckshorn war cemetery.
• Munster – Uelzen railway line at kilometer 13.4 - 4 unknown dead rest on the Ebstorf war cemetery.
• Uelzen – Lüneburg rail line at kilometer 115.4 - 12 dead, eight of them are now resting on the Wichmannsburg war cemetery .
• Lüneburg train station - 12 dead, eleven of them are resting today on the war cemetery at the Tiergarten in Lüneburg.
• Büchen station
• Hagenow train station
• Wittenberge train station - 26 dead were unloaded there, their whereabouts are unknown.

In 1992, a Jewish foundation planted a small forest in Israel to commemorate the dead of the train and all the citizens of Tröbitz who helped to alleviate the suffering.

Other work-up

The encounter with the survivors of the lost train and the assistance as well as the terrible time of the typhoid epidemic and the high number of deaths in 1945 were a turning point in the local history of Tröbitz and henceforth shaped its residents. Adults as well as schoolchildren looked after the memorials created in the area. The Tröbitz resident Erika Arlt, who had only moved here in the 1950s, tried painstakingly to research the fate of the survivors, created a chronicle , collected documents and made contact with the survivors of the train or their relatives.

See on the subject also

• As part of the Holocaust , so-called end- phase crimes against prisoners occurred in many places in extermination , concentration and forced labor camps in the last months of the war .

• The deportation of German Jews was technically planned and carried out in close cooperation between the Reichsbahn and the transport specialist of the Reich Main Security Office , Office IV B 4 (Jewish affairs, eviction affairs), Adolf Eichmann . The employees of the railway were not to keep the loading of the trains and their purpose hidden along the entire route. On the basis of the written announcement in the internal timetable, they could be clearly identified as transporting prisoners for the railway employees. Deportation memorials at train stations / with reference to the train there are in Germany today u. a. in Berlin, train station Grunewald , Hamburg-Winterhude and Stuttgart, former north station .

literature

Research literature

• Erika Arlt : The Jewish memorials Tröbitz, Wildgrube, Langennaundorf and Schilda in the Elbe-Elster district. Ed .: Elbe-Elster district, Herzberg 1999.
• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 .
• District cabinet for extracurricular activities (ed.): Death marches 1945 in the area of ​​today's Cottbus district. Heft, Cottbus, 1985
• Rudolf Matthies : "Jews in our homeland" in "Local calendar for the Bad Liebenwerda district 1963" . Ed .: Working group for local literature in the German Cultural Association in the Bad Liebenwerda district. Bad Liebenwerda 1963, p. 131 to 135 .
• Regina Scheer : Dealing with the monuments. A research in Brandenburg. Ed .: Brandenburg State Center for Political Education, and: Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg, Potsdam 2003 ( PDF ).
• Bettina Zeugin (Ed.): Switzerland and the German ransom extortion in the occupied Netherlands. Deprivation of property, ransom, exchange 1940–1945. Supplement to the report “Switzerland and the refugees at the time of National Socialism”. Independent Expert Commission Switzerland – Second World War, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-908661-09-9 ( PDF ).
• Rainer Bauer (ed.): Erika and Richard Arlt: two lives for the GDR: a German history book. Verlag am park, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-945187-90-6 .

Survivor's Diaries and Memories

• Hans-Dieter Arntz : The Lost Train. In: The last Jewish elder from Bergen-Belsen. Helios Verlag, Aachen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86933-082-2 , pp. 449-530.
• Alison Leslie Gold: Memories of Anne Frank - Reflecting on Child Friendship. With an afterword by Lea Rosh , Ravensburger Buchverlag, Ravensburg 1998 (= Ravensburger young series), ISBN 3-473-35185-7 (German translation; English original title: Memories of Anne Frank ).
• Abel J. Herzberg : Two Streams. Diary from Bergen-Belsen. Erev-Rav-Verlag, Wittingen, 1997 (= Erev-Rav-Hefte: Gedenken , Nr. 1), ISBN 3-932810-00-7 (German translation; Dutch original title: Tweestromenland ).
• Arieh Koretz: Bergen-Belsen. Diary of a youth. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0899-2 .
• Renata Laqueur: Bergen-Belsen diary: 1944, 1945. Fackelträger-Verlag, Hanover, 3rd edition, 1995, ISBN 3-7716-2308-1 (German translation; Dutch original title: Dagboek uit Bergen-Belsen maart 1944 à April 1945 ).
• Felix Hermann Oestreicher: A Jewish doctor calendar. Through Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen to Tröbitz. Concentration camp diary 1943–1945. Ed .: Maria Goudsblom-Oestreicher and Erhard Roy, 1st edition, Hartung-Gorre-Verlag, Konstanz 2000, ISBN 3-89649-411-2 .
• Lila Perl, Marion Blumenthal-Lazan: Four little pebbles: the story of the Blumenthal family from Hoya. Ed .: Verein Heimatmuseum Grafschaft Hoya (self-published), Hoya 1996 (= limited, non-commercial German edition; English original title: Four perfect pebbles: a Holocaust story ).
• Schlomo Samson: Between darkness and light. 50 years after Bergen-Belsen. Memories of a Leipzig Jew. Rubin Mass publishing house, Jerusalem 1995, ISBN 965-09-0054-3 .
• Werner Weinberg : Self-Portrait of a Holocaust. Jefferson, North Carolina and London 1985.

Newspaper articles

• Hans Arnold: How did that happen? . In: Liebenwerdaer Kreiszeitung . No. 11, March 18, 1965
• Hans-Joachim Pohl: The lost transport . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . 25 year, Berlin 1998, pp. 120–124.
• Terrible tragedy on the edge of the rail . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Finsterwalde, October 4, 2003
• Schipkau - a suffering station for Jewish prisoners . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Senftenberg, April 16, 2005
• We were very young . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Senftenberg, April 20, 2005
• White towels fluttered from the 46 cars . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Lübbenau / Calau, April 20, 2005
• A candle for the dead Jews from Tröbitz . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Finsterwalde, April 24, 2007
• Lost memory . In: Potsdam Latest News , April 13, 2013

Documentaries (film)

• Hans-Jürgen Hermel : The lost train. On the wheels of the Reichsbahn through hell . TV documentary by NDR , 1999.
• Nina Rücker: Hannah Pick: Anne Franks' school friend . Documentary in collaboration with the Anne Frank Center Berlin, 2003.
• Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg : Remembrance of prisoners' wandering in Brandenburg currently , April 23, 2013, 7:30 p.m. (3:32 min).

Web links

Commons : The Lost Train  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Lost transport on the website of the municipality of Tröbitz
• The lost train from Tröbitz , contribution by Heide Kramer
• Materials on the Lost Transport from the Erika Arlt archive - and more on the Arlt archive website.

Survivor interviews and reports

• Interview with Hannah Pick-Goslar in the FAZ
• Excerpt from the diary entries of the survivors Renata Laqueur
• The story of the surviving family Rosenberg with pictures of various documents (English)

Interviews and reports from liberators

• Interview with George C. Gross with pictures of the first train in Farsleben (English)

cards

• Location map of the Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz
• Location of the Jewish cemetery in Tröbitz: 51 ° 35 ′ 36.5 ″  N , 13 ° 25 ′ 23.9 ″  E

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Rahe : Bergen-Belsen main camp. In: Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Diestel: The place of terror. Volume 7, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 212.
2. ↑ inforiot.de ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. or According to Heinz Tödter's website kz-zuege.de , based on “Only God the Lord knows their names”, published by Sigrun Wulf, self-published, 1991. ISBN 3-927594-12-1 . accessed Apr. 23, 2010. 
3. ↑ Home calendar for the Bad Liebenwerda district, 1995, p. 90.
4. ↑ Erika Arlt: The Jewish Memorials , etc., 1999.
5. ↑ Hans-Joachim Pohl: The lost transport. Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter, 25th year, Berlin 1998, pp. 120–124.
6. ↑ Daniel Blatman: The Death Marches - Decision Makers , Murderers and Victims. In: Ulrich Herbert , Karin Orth and Christoph Dieckmann : The National Socialist Concentration Camps. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-596-15516-9 , Volume 2, p. 1068.
7. ↑ Thomas Rahe: Bergen-Belsen main camp. P. 212. See also the article on the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Eberhard Kolb: Bergen-Belsen. From “residence camp” to concentration camp 1943–1945. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1986, p. 72.
9. ↑ farsleben.de ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ celle-im-nationalsozialismus.de ( Memento from September 10, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Hans-Joachim Pohl: The lost transport. In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter. 25 year, Berlin 1998, p. 122.
12. ^ Abel J. Herzberg: Zweistromland. etc. 1997, p. 246.
13. ↑ 75 years ago - Red Army troops liberate the "Lost Train" . In: Deutschlandfunk . Accessed July 31, 2020.
14. ↑ District Cabinet for Extraordinary Activities (Ed.): Death marches 1945. etc. Cottbus, 1985, p. 35.
15. ↑ Renata Laqueur: Bergen-Belsen diary. etc. 1995, p. 136.
16. ↑ Page 115. ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB) 
17. ^ Home calendar for the Bad Liebenwerda district. 1995, pp. 89-94.
18. ↑ at geschichtsunterricht-online.de/
19. ↑ White lead was often called "Richard" in Tröbitz (actually the name of his "savior") because "Celino" was a very unusual name in Saxony. His real name is still different - see Celino lead white .
20. ↑ dbnl.nl/
21. ↑ flamersheim.de/ ( Memento of the original from October 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
22. ↑ Susanne Esch: Stolpersteine ​​in Cologne: Memory of four former students of the Kreuzgasse grammar school . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . DuMont, Cologne March 26, 2019.
23. ↑ Renata Laqueur: Bergen-Belsen diary . etc., 1995, pp. 101-102.
24. ^ Abel J. Herzberg: Zweistromland. etc. 1997, p. 237.
25. ↑ Lecture on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation on April 15, 2005 at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial
26. ^ Felix Hermann Oestreicher: A Jewish doctor calendar. etc., 2000, p. 204.
27. ↑ Erika Arlt: The Jewish memorials in the Elbe-Elster district. etc., pp. 17-39. (This list of names largely corresponds to the names on the granite slabs of the memorial wall. The basis here was the lists of the dead of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amsterdam.)
28. ^ Ernst Gottfried Lowenthal:  Levie, Werner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 398 ( digitized version ).
29. ^ Arlt: The Jewish memorials Tröbitz, Wildgrube, Langennaundorf and Schilda in the Elbe-Elster district, pp. 69–80.
30. ↑ Dieter Babbe: Tröbitz remembers "Lost Transport" 64 years ago  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Finsterwalde, April 24, 2009  
31. ^ Dieter Babbe: Concentration camp exhibition now in the former church . In: Lausitzer Rundschau . Regional edition Finsterwalde, April 4, 2009
32. ^ "Schipkau - a station of suffering for Jewish prisoners" in Lausitzer Rundschau , regional section: Senftenberg, April 16, 2005
33. ↑ Page 116. ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB) 
34. ↑ Politik-bildung-brandenburg.de/publikationen/… page 118 ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.6 MB) 
35. ↑ Hans-Joachim Pohl: The lost transport . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . 25 year, Berlin 1998, p. 121.
36. ^ Home calendar for the Bad Liebenwerda district . 1995, pp. 89-94.
37. ↑ Quoted from the district cabinet for extracurricular activity (ed.): Death marches 1945 ... etc., 1985
38. ↑ On this at phoenix.de ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
39. ↑ On this report by Heide Kramer at hagalil.com/, November 2003; accessed Apr. 23, 2010
40. ↑ mediathek.rbb-online.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 24, 2009 .