The Lost Train

Memorial located in Schipkau, where the train stopped for 2 days.

The Lost Train (German: Verlorener Zug) also known as the Train of the Lost (German: Zug der Verlorenen), was the second of three trains that were intended to transport prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Theresienstadt during the final phase of World War II as Allied troops approached the camp. The eponymous train was left behind after a necessary railway bridge was destroyed near Tröbitz. The Jewish prisoners were eventually discovered and freed by the Red Army.

History[]

During the last weeks of WW2, the SS transported Jewish concentration camp prisoners on trains from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt as the allied front pushed closer to the concentration camp.^[1][2] Between 6 and 11 April 1945, three transport trains with a total of around 6,800 people, deemed Austauschjuden ("exchange Jews") by the SS, and were selected to be taken to the other camp.^[3][4][5] The selection was based on Jews who had held a high position, and could be exchanged for German prisoners of war. About one-third were Dutch Jews.^[6] The prisoners from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were put on three trains to be transported to Theresienstadt.^[7]

Planned route of the Lost Train

Only one train reached Theresienstadt, due to a railway bridge blowing up outside of Tröbitz by allied bombing preventing the other two from completing the trip.^[1][8][9] The first made it to the final destination, while the third was rescued by American troops, including Carroll S. Walsh Jr. The second transport would be the one known as the Lost Train.^[5][10][11] Once Theresienstadt was no longer reachable for the train, holding around 2,500 people, the guards attempted to hold the prisoners in the train outside of Tröbitz.^[12][13]

It would not be until 23 April that the Red Army would discover and free the prisoners.^[9][14][15] Gradually, the guards abandoned the prisoners as allied forces approached, leaving the Russians to discover a train car filled with the bodies of those dead and close to death, with several additional prisoners seeking shelter in nearby abandoned houses.^[11] Of the prisoners, 198 were already dead, from malnutrition and disease, and 320 additional people would die due to complications from exhaustion and disease.^[6][7][16] It was reported by the female survivors, that Soviets who rescued them raped many of them, as the Nazis had done previously.^[17]

Unlike the other trains that attempted to relocate Nazi prisoners, this event had some unique characteristics. It was one of the few trains that carried exclusively Jewish prisoners, many of the prisoners on board possessed purchased passports of foreign countries, and the German Jews were listed as stateless under their nationality.^[8]

Numbering among the survivors were Hannah Goslar, her sister, Abel Herzberg, Jaap Meijer, and his two-year old son Ischa Meijer, Jona Oberski, and Levie Vorst.^{[2][17][18][19][20][21]}

Legacy[]

A list of victims of the Lost Train at the Tröbitz Holocaust memorial.

In 2015, the Brandenburg State Secretary for Culture, Marin Gorholt, the residents of Tröbitz began commemorating the lives of the lost immediately after the end of World War II. She made these comments while unveiling a €78,000 exhibit on the Lost Train.^[22] This was just one of several monuments and Jewish cemeteries commemorating the numerous victims of the Lost Train, in Tröbitz and other surrounding villages.^[4][9][16]

The deaths would also be memorialized by Christian groups who set up a hiking trail along the final train's route.^[10]

References[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Lost Transport.