Gleis 17 at Grunewald station. The first transport left from this goods ramp on 18 October 1941; the memorial’s cast-steel plates along the platform edge give every transport’s date, number of people and destination.Photo: Andreas Praefcke, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.
Deported from Berlin · 1941–45
Between 18 October 1941 and 27 March 1945 the Gestapo sent 184 transports out of the city: 61 east, to the ghettos, the shooting sites and Auschwitz, and 123 to the ghetto at Theresienstadt. They left from Berlin’s own railway stations.
01Grunewald · Moabit · Anhalter Bahnhof
The deportations were not hidden in a camp outside the city. The first transport left from the goods ramp at Grunewald station; later ones from the goods yard at Moabit; the transports to Theresienstadt from the Anhalter Bahnhof, a busy passenger terminus, coupled to the morning train.
The transport lists do not name stations; these are known from witnesses.
Berlin: where the transports left from
18 October 1941
The first transport left the freight ramp at Grunewald station on 18 October 1941, for the Łódź ghetto: 1,013 people. Since 1998, the memorial Gleis 17 — “track 17” — has lined the platform with 186 cast-steel plates, one for each transport’s date, number of people and destination.
From 1942
From 1942, probably, the eastbound transports left from the goods yard at Moabit, in the middle of the city. A memorial now stands on the Putlitzbrücke, the bridge above the tracks.
From 2 June 1942
116 transports to Theresienstadt, carrying more than 9,600 people, left the Anhalter Bahnhof: usually two third-class coaches coupled to the scheduled 6.07 passenger train to Dresden or Prague, from platform 1.
27 Feb 1943 – 6 Mar 1943
In the Fabrikaktion, the “factory operation” of February 1943, the Gestapo seized the Jews still working in Berlin’s factories. About 2,000 of them, Jews with non-Jewish husbands or wives, were held at Rosenstraße 2–4 while their families protested outside for a week. They were released.
0218 October 1941 – 27 March 1945
Every transport the surviving lists record is drawn here, week by week. Above the line are the 61 transports east, carrying 35,692 people; below it, on the same scale, the 123 transports to Theresienstadt, carrying 15,125. Each block is one train; its height is the number of people on the Berlin list.
The counts are those of the corrected Gestapo transport lists, transcribed by Statistik des Holocaust; for the first seven transports, which that table does not count, the figures are those of the Gottwaldt & Schulle list.
Every transport from Berlin, week by week
October 1941 – July 1942
The first transports carried about a thousand people each, to the ghettos of Łódź, Minsk, Riga, Piaski and Warsaw. Two of them never reached a ghetto. The 1,006 people sent to Kaunas on 17 November 1941 were shot at Fort IX within days of arrival, on 25 November 1941. The 1,053 sent to Riga on 27 November 1941 were shot in the Rumbula forest on arrival, 30 November 1941.
2 Jun 1942 – 25 Sep 1942
The first transport for the elderly left on 2 June 1942: 50 people. One of them survived. Through that summer, transports of fifty or a hundred people left on most weekdays; two large ones carried about a thousand each.
August 1942 – February 1943
Between the end of July 1942 and the end of March 1943 the Jewish register of Berlin fell from 51,506 to 18,515. From 29 November 1942, every transport east went to Auschwitz. 18,507 people from Berlin were sent there in 37 transports.
27 Feb 1943 – 6 Mar 1943
On 27 February 1943 the Gestapo seized the Jews at their workplaces: the Fabrikaktion. About 4,000 escaped into hiding. Between 1 Mar 1943 and 6 Mar 1943 the others left in 5 transports. Of the 1,736 on the first, 677 were registered in Auschwitz for labour; the other 1,059 were murdered at once. In March 1943 the register recorded 8,658 people deported in a single month.
April 1943 – February 1945
After June 1943 no transport east carried more than 99 people. On 10 June 1943 the Reichsvereinigung, the compulsory body of Germany’s Jews, was dissolved. The last 4 transports east went to the concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen.
27 March 1945
The last transport left Berlin on 27 March 1945, for Theresienstadt: 42 people, 24 of them first listed for Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück.
03Eleven destinations
The trains went to 11 destinations: ghettos where the deportees were held until they were sent on or died, shooting sites, extermination and concentration camps. Each circle below is drawn to the number of people sent there from Berlin.
Where the transports from Berlin went
Circle area is the number of people; each destination’s figures are given below. Coastlines from Natural Earth; today’s borders are left out, because they are not those of 1941–45. The transport of June 1942 to Majdanek and Sobibór is drawn at Sobibór; the last four transports east, to Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, at Sachsenhausen. Places: OpenStreetMap.
18,507 people · 37 transports
Most were murdered on arrival. Of 1,736 on the first Fabrikaktion transport, 677 were registered for labour; the other 1,059 were killed at once.
The International Monument to the Victims of Fascism at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, 2012. Jorge Láscar from Australia, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.
15,125 people · 123 transports
The ghetto for the old. Fewer than one in eight of the Berliners sent there survived.
A transport arrives at the Theresienstadt ghetto: gouache by Ferdinand Bloch, a Viennese artist held there, 1942–44. He was murdered in the ghetto’s Small Fortress in October 1944. Ferdinand Bloch · Ghetto Fighters' House · public domain · Wikimedia Commons
7,655 people · 8 transports
The 1,053 on the first transport were shot in the Rumbula forest on arrival, 30 Nov 1941.
The memorial stone in the Rumbula forest outside Riga, set up in 1964 by activists of Riga’s Jewish community, where the people on the first Berlin transport to Riga were shot on arrival, 30 November 1941. Its inscription, in Latvian, Russian and Yiddish: “To the victims of fascism”. Adam Jones, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.
4,042 people · 4 transports
The Berlin lists hold 4,042 names; the arrival records count 4,172 to 4,206, including 122 Jews from Emden added to the second transport.
The memorial at Radegast station in Łódź, the railway station of the Łódź ghetto, where Jews of the ghetto were gathered for deportation. Brücke-Osteuropa, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
1,158 people · 2 transports
The second transport's destination is not certain.
1,006 people · 1 transport
All 1,006 were shot at Fort IX within days of arrival, on 25 November 1941.
The killing ground at the Ninth Fort, Kaunas, where the people on the Berlin transport of 17 November 1941 were shot on 25 November. חיים 7, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
973 people · 1 transport
A memorial stone at the new Jewish cemetery in Piaski, the small town in the Lublin district whose ghetto received the Berlin transport of 28 March 1942. Photographed 2026. Grażyna Adamczyk, 2026. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.
809 people · 1 transport
A few hundred were picked for Jägala camp; the rest were shot at Kalevi-Liiva.
The memorial at Kalevi-Liiva, near Raasiku in Estonia. The people on the Berlin transport of September 1942 who were not picked for the Jägala camp were shot here. Kristjan Lust from Estonia, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.
746 people · 1 transport
36 men were taken off at Lublin for Majdanek; the rest went on, most likely to Sobibór.
The mausoleum at the site of the Sobibór extermination camp. Merlin. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0. · Detail of the monument to the victims of the Majdanek camp, Lublin, 2007. Roland Geider ( Ogre ), 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
708 people · 2 transports
Counted here: the Berliners. Both trains also carried Jews from Brandenburg, Magdeburg and Anhalt.
The Umschlagplatz memorial in Warsaw, on the site from which the ghetto’s inhabitants were deported. Reuvenk, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
88 people · 4 transports
At the Ravensbrück memorial: the plaque to Milena Jesenská on the former camp prison, 2015. Wald1siedel, 2015. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. · The obelisk on the former roll-call ground of the Sachsenhausen camp, 2010. Alex Walker, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
04Four of them
Berlin marks them in its pavements: Stolpersteine, “stumbling stones”, small brass plates set in front of the houses where they last lived. These are four of them. Each was on one of the trains drawn above.
On the transport of 23 June 1942: 202 people, to Minsk (the destination of that train is not certain). She worked for the Reichsvereinigung, the compulsory body of Germany's Jews. Nothing is known of her after Minsk; the date of her murder is unknown.
The Stolperstein for Cora Berliner, Emser Straße 38, Wilmersdorf. OTFW, Berlin, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
On the 24th eastern transport: 1,000 people, to Auschwitz. Murdered in Auschwitz.
The Stolperstein for Hannah Karminski, Oranienburger Straße 22, Mitte. OTFW, Berlin, 2015. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
On the 26th eastern transport: 1,190 people, to Auschwitz. One of the best-known German children's authors of the 1920s. Deported on 12 January 1943; murdered in Auschwitz the next day.
The Stolperstein for Else Ury, Solinger Straße 10, Moabit. OTFW, Berlin, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
On the 33rd eastern transport: 1,731 people, to Auschwitz. Eleven years old. Deported on 3 March 1943, in the week of the Fabrikaktion, and murdered in Auschwitz the next day.
The Stolperstein for Marion Samuel, Rhinower Straße 11, Prenzlauer Berg. OTFW, Berlin, 2023. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
05October 1941 – February 1945
On 1 October 1941 the Reichsvereinigung counted 72,872 Jews in Berlin. On 28 February 1945 the count was 6,284.
Jews registered in Berlin, October 1941 – February 1945
The Reichsvereinigung’s monthly returns run to April 1943; nothing is drawn between the last return and the count of February 1945. The fall in the register also counts deaths and suicides in Berlin, not only deportations.
The 6,284 Jews still registered on 28 February 1945
The count of 28 February 1945 (Yad Vashem Archives O.8/145) found only 162 registered Jews in Berlin who had no non-Jewish spouse.
Outside the register, up to 7,000 Berlin Jews went underground; by the historian Richard Lutjens’s reckoning, about 1,700 of those who hid survived. About 1,290 took their own lives rather than face deportation.
A marriage was the last protection. By 1945 most of the Jews left in Berlin were the husbands and wives of non-Jews.
061945
Of the 50,029 Jews deported from Berlin, about 2,000 returned, most of them from Theresienstadt. Even there, fewer than one in eight of the Berliners survived.
Each square is about 1,000 of the people deported. The two lit squares are the roughly 2,000 who came back.
For three and a half years Berlin deported its Jews from its own railway stations.
By the end, almost the only Jews left in the capital were those with a non-Jewish husband or wife, or in hiding.
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