From Hamburg to Minsk

Nils H. Roemer, Director, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies
Katie Fisher, Research Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Shefali Sahu, MS in Information Science
Yannis Soonjung Kwon, Undergraduate Research Apprentice
Siddhant Somani, Business Analytics

This case study compiles the records of individuals born in Hamburg or with residence in Hamburg during the war. A total of 17 deportations departed from Hamburg between 1941–1945 to Lodz, Minsk, Riga, Auschwitz, or Theresienstadt, two of which departed for Minsk on November 8^th and November 11^th of 1941. Hamburg Jews were rounded up and assembled at one of Hamburg’s Masonic lodges where they would be stripped of their belongings and boarded upon the trains. An eyewitness account recalled that during these roundups, around 20-30 individuals would attempt or commit suicide.  

The transports, initially intended for Lodz, were redirected to Minsk due to supply shortages or overcrowding at Lodz. One record indicates a transport departing Hamburg with 570 people arrived at Minsk with 978. Trains to Minsk passed through Berlin where more Jews were assembled and deported. Over half (258 out of 457) of the deportees from Hamburg were above 45. Very few young children are recorded as part of these transports. Compared to the transports later in the war which included a wider range of ages and nationalities, the deportations to Minsk consisted primarily of Jews who had lived in Germany for an extended period. For deportees born in other countries, they tended to be among older age groups. 

Upon arrival, many were immediately shot or gassed in mobile gas vans, and those not selected for murder were instead assigned to forced labor in factories. While the murders were overall indiscriminate, slightly more women than men were immediately killed upon arrival, and men tended to be selected for work at a higher rate.  Of the 457 named individuals who were deported from Hamburg to Minsk, 103 were recorded as having died in Minsk between 1941 and 1942. Deaths recorded from 1943–1945 happened while Nazis worked to liquidate the ghetto or as victims were transferred again to Sachsenhausen, Riga, Neuengamme, or Reichhoff and murdered.

References:  

Yad Vashem, Shoah Resource Center, Hamburg. 

Deportation on November 8, 1941 at Yad Vashem.  

Deportation on November 18, 1941 at Yad Vashem. 

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia, Minsk. 

Holocaust Historical Society, Minsk.