Deportation und Annihilation

Often the entry on a list of deportations is the last testimony of a person's fate. There are seldom concrete reports of his suffering and dying in the ghetto or camp. The majority of the Austrian Jews were deported between spring 1941 and autumn 1942. The transports from autumn 1939 to Nisko on the San and the year 1944 to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz mark the beginning and end of the murder of 422 St. Pöltner Jews.

Auschwitz
Insgesamt 18 jüdische Menschen aus St. Pölten und den Landgemeinden wurden nach Auschwitz deportiert, allerdings nicht direkt, sondern über Theresienstadt oder andere Ghettos und Lager. Vom französischen Sammellager Drancy gingen drei Transporte, in denen sich St. Pöltner befanden, in das Vernichtungslager, am 28. August, 9. September und 4. November 1942. Aus dem Lager Fossoli in Italien wurde das Ehepaar Adolf und Berta Berger mit dem Transport vom 16. Mai 1944 nach Auschwitz deportiert. 

Generalgouvernement (District of Lublin)

Kielce

The destinations of the deportations to the district of Lublin in the so-called Generalgouvernement in Poland were small cities with low reception capacities. The death rate already rose in the first months due to poor accommodation, cold, hunger and disease. In the spring of 1941 about 5000 Jews were deported from the Sammellager Wien 2, Castellezgasse 35 via the Aspang station: to Opole on 15 and 26 February, to Kielce on 19 February, to Modliborzyce on 5 March and to Lagow and Opatow on the March 12th. In each of these transports were St. Pöltner.

Karl and Eliese Weinstein from Markersdorf and her ten-year-old daughter Lotti had been deported to Kielce in February 1941. The older son Hermann had been able to save himself to Palestine. They remained in contact with their former neighbor Amalia Brunner, who helped them with food sentiments, until their death. Karl Weinstein wrote to her: 

„They had the great amiability to honor us with a bag of love, which of course had the greatest joy in us. In spite of the long delivery time, the whirlpool was still as good as if it were only a few days old, and the greatest joy he had brought to the Lotti, since unfortunately we had to do without everything. Our way of life is now so modest that we look at bread and potatoes for delicacies, and it often happens that we have no bread every day. [...] We left Vienna in February and had to drive in unheated coaches without light for two days and two nights. I had to bring my wife to the hospital on arrival, where she spent five weeks, and can not recover from the hardships.“  

Karl, Eliese und Lotti Weinstein were murdered in Kielce.

A few persons succeeded in the illegal return to Vienna, whereupon the working people were employed by the SS in work camps. The majority of the deportees were assassinated in the spring and summer of 1942 within the framework of the "Aktion Reinhardt" in Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. After the end of euthanasia in Germany in the autumn of 1941, the gas chambers were demolished there and rebuilt in the east in various cities, including Lublin. In the spring of 1942, the deportations to the Lublin district were resumed. St. Pöltner Jews were in the transports from 9 April, 12 May and 5 June to Izbica and in the from April 27 to Wlodawa. The people of these transports were gassed in the summer and autumn in Belzec and Sobibor or in Lublin, which later became known as Majdanek concentration camp. 

Nisko at the San

The deportations to Nisko were the first transports of Jews from Vienna to the East. About 1,600 people were deported in two transports, at least in the October 20, 1939, St. Pöltner. Of these 1,600, 198 were placed in a barrack camp under construction, the rest being driven over the German-Soviet demarcation line. The action was interrupted in April 1940 and about 200 Jewish men returned to Vienna. The fate of those driven across the line of demarcation is unclear, except in some cases.   

Litzmannstadt-Lodz

On 30 September 1941, the IKG Vienna was informed that between 15 October and 3 November five transports, each with about one thousand persons, would go to Lodz. St. Pöltner Jews were in the trains of 23 October, 28 October and 2 November. Since the living conditions were very bad, many of the deportees were soon considered as unemployed and were murdered in January 1942 in Chelmno / Kulmhof in Gaswägen. The grandparents of Hildefein, Wilhelm and Mathilde Gelb, as well as Wilhelm's brother Leopold from Ratzersdorf, were deported from Vienna on October 23, 1941 to Lodz.

Mrs. Fein: „Well, and one day, we've always been [in Vienna], and they have visited, they have also had to live on something, we have brought them something, as good as it has gone - one day we have just come and The door was sealed. Preprinted cards from Litzmannstadt: I'm fine, we're healthy. Reichsmark soundsoviele received. I still have a bill where we sent them money.“