Authors: Roger Moorhouse
the resettlement and that the synagogue on Levetzowstrasse was to
be used as a transit camp for those selected for deportation.5
With the help of the Berlin Jewish officials, therefore, lists of those
Jews scheduled for ‘resettlement’ were compiled and, in the following
days, the first notifications to would-be deportees were sent out. These
notifications, on the headed paper of the Berlin Jewish Organisation,
used a correct, unthreatening tone. Recipients were informed of the
date scheduled for their ‘emigration’ and were advised of the proce-
dures that were to be followed. Baggage, they were told, could be
deposited at the collection point on Levetzowstrasse two days prior
to departure. On the day before departure, the recipient’s apartment
would be sealed by the Gestapo and the recipient, along with his or
her spouse and any unmarried children, would have to proceed to the
collection point.6
An instruction leaflet was also enclosed, giving precise details of
what evacuees were permitted to take with them. Lists of necessities
were given, including warm clothing, underwear, umbrellas and
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163
bedding. Medicines, matches, shaving equipment and scissors were also
permitted. Importantly, all documents – including birth, marriage and
death certificates, but with the exception of passports – were to be
handed to the authorities. Similarly, all cash, jewellery, savings books,
bonds and financial papers had to be surrendered. Evacuees were
reminded that all bags were to be labelled with the transport number
and the name and address of the owner, and they had to ensure that
the
Judenstern
was clearly visible on any jacket or overcoat.7
The evacuation notice ended with a plea for evacuees ‘to follow
these instructions very precisely and to remain calm and collected
while preparing for the transport’. It concluded:
Those of our members affected by the evacuation must be aware that
their own behaviour and the orderly fulfilment of all instructions can
make a decisive contribution to the smooth conclusion of this evacu-
ation. Obviously, so far as is permitted, we will do everything we can
to stand by our members and afford them every possible assistance.8
As with each previous imposition, this new order was met with a
combination of fear, stoicism and impotent rage. Yet, perhaps because
of the involvement of their own community officials, the majority of
those affected complied with the order, collected their things and
prepared themselves and their families for a journey into the unknown.
The packing itself was an agonising process for many, as items of
sentimental value often had to be discarded in favour of more prac-
tical additions. Evacuees, therefore, inevitably spent many of those
remaining hours packing and repacking the few possessions and
mementoes that they wished to take with them. Food would be
prepared, and carefully packaged for the journey. Jewellery and cash
– though forbidden – would be sewn into the hems of coats, so as to
provide hidden reserves for barter or exchange.
In addition, all evacuees were obliged to compile an inventory of
all those possessions and household items – furniture, fittings, kitchen-
ware and other belongings – that they intended to leave behind. One
such inventory is that of Marion Samuel, who lived with her daughter
on Rhinowerstrasse in the working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg.
It gives a glimpse into a doomed world:
164
berlin at war
1 wardrobe
5 [Reichsmarks]
1 cabinet
5 -
1 table
15 -
5 chairs
10 -
1 bed frame
15 -
1 couch
30 -
1 mattress
5 -
2 side tables
2 -
3 suitcases
10 -
1 carpet
worthless
1 lamp
5 -
1 pair curtains
10 -
1 child’s chair
worthless
clothing
40 - . . . 9
Marion’s possessions were valued at a total of 220 Reichsmarks: about
a month’s wages to the average Berliner.
In time, a final balance sheet would be drawn up, upon which the
proceeds from a deported individual’s estate would be set against
various charges and demands made by the authorities – such as the
cost of their deportation. Utility companies were also permitted to
deduct any sums owed to them. All remaining monies automatically
fell into the coffers of the Reich.
After such formalities were completed, the time came for departure.
Inge Deutschkron described how her neighbour, a sixty-five-year-old
widow, was collected by the Gestapo:
Shortly after 8 a.m. the doorbell rang loudly and insistently. My mother
sat there as though paralysed. Almost soundlessly, she whispered only:
‘For God’s sake!’ As there was no doubt who was demanding entrance,
I put on my coat, with the ‘Star of David’, and opened the door. Before
me stood two tall men in grey leather coats. ‘Does Klara Sara Hohenstein
live here?’ they asked. I pointed to the door to her room, and went
back to my mother. . . .
We heard virtually nothing, apart from the footsteps in Frau
Hohenstein’s room. Then we heard her voice. She called to Aunt Olga,
who, trembling with fear, stood up and haltingly went to the door.
She stopped on the threshold and called out ‘Yes, what do you want?’
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165
Frau Hohenstein said, quite calmly, that she was being taken away.
She did not know any more. As soon as she could, she would be in
touch, she said. As if to interrupt any further speculation, one of the
men added that the room would be sealed and that it was an offence
to break the seal or to remove anything from the room. Then they led
Frau Hohenstein to the door. We heard it slam and then listened to
the men’s footsteps, and the quiet patter of Frau Hohenstein, as they
reverberated in the stairwell. Then we heard nothing more. Once again,
it was as quiet as the grave.10
As this testimony suggests, the ‘evacuations’ to the transit camp, though
harrowing for all concerned, were usually carried out in an orderly
fashion. At the time given in the deportation notice, the evacuees would
be collected by the Gestapo, and be transferred to the camp by truck or
car. When it became clear that the authorities were encountering little
resistance in their round-ups of evacuees, the Jewish community itself
was permitted to supply its own personnel –
Ordner
, or auxiliaries – to
carry out that first stage of the evacuation, supposedly with a little more
consideration than the Gestapo.
For the auxiliaries, this proved a most difficult task. They found
themselves caught between the wrath of their own community and
that of the Gestapo. Held responsible by the authorities for the smooth
running of the deportation process, they were threatened with deport -
ation themselves when things went wrong. Two such auxiliaries were
summarily sent on the transports that they had helped to organise,
after it transpired that they had allowed a young girl to escape.11 At
the same time, they were viewed with little sympathy by their own
people. As one eyewitness recalled:
[They] were mostly young men. They were doing their duty.
Sometimes they seemed to be inhuman. Driving their victims
on: ‘Quick, quick, you not ready yet?’ But perhaps delaying the
inevitable would just have been crueller. They overpowered our old
landlady from Bamberger Strasse 22, who fought against her depor-
tation with her hands and feet and with terrible screams. They carried
her down the stairs to the truck waiting below, complete with the
chair in which she sat as though nailed down. They had their quota
to fill.’12
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berlin at war
Though their initial ‘collection’ might be civil, most evacuees found
that conditions altered rapidly once they arrived at the transit camp
on Levetzowstrasse. Here, they would be registered and ticked off the
‘Deportation List’. Then they would have to wait for the transfer to
their allotted train, which in most instances would leave at least twenty-
four hours after its ‘passengers’ had been processed.
The Jewish community did its best to make the assembly camp
as comfortable for the deportees as possible. One of its representa-
tives was Hildegard Henschel, the wife of the organisation’s head,
Moritz Henschel, who was intimately involved in the community
effort:
Food supplies, medicines, sanitary materials, underwear, clothes, shoes
. . . everything was brought to the Levetzowstrasse and, within a few
hours, separate kitchens for adults and for children were up and running
[as well as] a section of the Jewish hospital, with doctors and nurses,
for accidents and first aid. There was a separate children’s room for
toddlers with nursery nurses and teachers, a store of mattresses for the
old and weak . . . a baggage porter service was organised by members
of the community and in a nearby kitchen packages of supplies were
prepared for everyone.13
Despite such noble efforts, however, the long wait in the former
synagogue was a harrowing time. For those that remembered the syna-
gogue as a house of worship, it would have made a shocking sight.
Now little more than a bare hall, all of its fittings, pews, and sacred
paraphernalia had been removed and destroyed; in their place rough
hessian sacks filled with straw provided the only creature comforts.
Here the deportees were constantly exposed to the barked orders and
abuse of the Gestapo. ‘Everything was confiscated’, wrote the Berlin
Jew Hermann Samter:
At Levetzow street they first took all the money from the people, then
all metal belongings (including razors if they were metal), all docu-
ments [were taken] with the exception of the identity card which was
stamped ‘evacuated to Litzmannstadt’ . . . No one except the commu-
nity workers was permitted to enter the camp.14
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167
Such confiscations, it seems, were an established part of the process.
‘The Gestapo “filtered” all baggage’, one evacuee recalled,
searching through and removing anything that seemed desirable . . .
Fortunately the Jewish community people almost always managed to
replace those important items of clothing that had been ‘filtered’ from
their supplies. The items that were confiscated varied from day to day,
as each Gestapo officer had his own preferences and his own require-
ments. It was an open secret that when Commissar Stubbs was on
duty, no mouthwash, after-shave or eau de cologne would get through.
Anything with even a small alcohol content would be removed and
drunk on the spot.15
Quite apart from the depredations of the authorities, the evacuees
would have been profoundly unnerved by the simple lack of knowl-
edge about where they were being taken. Though very few of them
had any inkling of their true fate, they were still being torn from their
homes and their loved ones and were taking a step into the unknown.
For some, it was step that they would do anything to avoid. ‘I will never
forget the nights that I spent there’, recalled Siegmund Weltlinger, who
worked for the Jewish community at the camp, ‘heartbreaking scenes
would be played out. There were always suicides or suicide attempts.
Some women threw themselves down from the balcony onto the marble
floor below.’16
Even when a destination was given for a transport, it brought the
deportees little clarity or comfort. Though they might have been dimly
aware of Riga, Minsk, Warsaw or Kaunas, they had little idea of condi-
tions in those cities. ‘Litzmannstadt’, meanwhile – the destination of the
first four transports to leave the capital – was almost completely unknown.
Only a few of the deportees would have known that Litzmannstadt was
the former Lódz˙, the western Polish city which had been rechristened
by the occupying Germans the previous autumn. Fewer still would have
known that – since the previous year – it was home to one of the largest
Jewish ghettos in occupied Europe.
In the absence of hard facts, the Berlin rumour mill ran riot. It was
suggested, for instance, that a kibbutz was to be established ‘on the
Palestinian model’ in the former Latvian capital, Riga.17 Though few
dared to ask questions, the official story was that Berlin’s Jews were
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berlin at war
being sent to labour camps where, it was insinuated, they would ‘finally
be taught the meaning of hard work’. This fiction was believed by
many of those deported from the capital. Others, however, suspected
the truth: that the unfortunates were being sent to concentration
camps, or even to certain death.
Two days after the initial round-up, on the morning of Saturday
18 October 1941, the first one thousand Jews were taken from the
collection camp in the Levetzowstrasse synagogue and marched to
the railway station at Grunewald in the western suburbs of the