Halberstadt
04/12/1942
Close-up of the deportation of Jews from Halberstadt on April 12, 1942.
Image: Familie Beverstein
Annotations
Historical context
Deportation von Halberstadt nach Warschau am 14.04.1942
On April 12, 1942, 102 Jews from Halberstadt were deported to Warsaw via Magdeburg and Berlin.
The deportees had to present themselves on Domplatz at what was then the town’s residents' registration office.
From Halberstadt, they were sent to the assembly camp in Magdeburg on May 13. From there, they were taken to Berlin together with 344 other people from the administrative district of Magdeburg. From Berlin, they were deported to Warsaw on April 14, 1942 on a "Koppelzug” (coupled train). In addition to Jews from Potsdam, the "Koppelzug" also carried people from the Berlin area. There is no record of the deportees from Halberstadt having to spend a night in the Levetzowstraße assembly camp in Berlin. It is more probable that the train was coupled together at Moabit freight station or Grunewald train station in Berlin. The train arrived in Warsaw on April 16, 1942. The deported people had to reenact their arrival at Warsaw for a propaganda film.
To the best of our knowledge, this transport had no survivors.
About the image series
The series consists of two photos showing a group of people with luggage walking in one direction. The distance of the photographer from the group and the perspective vary: in one picture, the group was photographed from further away, in the other, the photographer was closer. Halberstadt Cathedral is clearly visible in the background of both photos.
The photos have been pasted side by side onto a sheet of paper, the following caption is handwritten in German below them: “Auszug der Kinder Israels” (Exodus of the Children of Israel). The photos are prints without negatives.
There is also a slightly larger print of each photo. Five people have been identified.
The backs of the photos are blank with some paper residue on them, indicating that the photos were pasted into an album and later removed from it.
Photographer
Unbekannt
Provenance
Justin Berlin returned to his former home in Halberstadt as a translator with the British Army after the war and discovered two photographs of the deportation in a "Nazi photo album" that is not described in any greater detail. Two of the people he recognized on the photos were his wife and daughter. He passed the photos on to Walter Beverstein, also from Halberstadt, who recognized his parents. The pictures are still in the possession of the Beverstein family.
The prints in Yad Vashem are of different provenance: The two photos with the caption arrived there in 1984 under unknown circumstances. The print with a negative reached Yad Vashem at an unknown date. The other print was given to Yad Vashem by Mark Shreberman in 1998. The connection to the pictures preserved by the Beverstein family is not known.
Call number at source archive
Ohne Signatur
Title at source archive
Ohne Titel
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the Beverstein family, US, and to Cornelia Shati-Geißler and Jonathan Matthews (both Yad Vashem).
Text und Recherche: Akim Jah.
Kooperationsverbund #LastSeen. Bilder der NS-Deportationen Dr. Alina Bothe Projektleiterin
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