Regensburg
04/02/1942
No less than seventy-five Jews from Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate are waiting on the site of the Regensburg synagogue destroyed in 1938, guarded by the police. They had to put down their luggage next to the parked car. It is unclear whether the photograph shows their arrival at the assembly camp on April 3 or their deportation on April 4.
Historical context
Deportation von Regensburg nach Piaski am 04.04.1942
On April 3, 1942, municipal and security police units arrested people throughout Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate persecuted because they were Jewish. The police officers took them by train to the assembly point in Regensburg where they had to spend the night in the prayer room of the Jewish community home on Schäffnerstraße 4. On the next morning, they had to line up on the site of the synagogue destroyed and demolished in 1938 before being taken by bus to the Regensburg east station. There they were forced to board a passenger train coming from Munich as were one hundred and six Regensburg Jews who had been picked up from their homes in the morning of April 4, 1942 only and exposed to a humiliating medical check in the Jewish home for the aged on Weissenburgerstraße 31. After a four-day journey, the transport with a total of 987 Jews on board reached the Piaski ghetto near Lublin. The deportees either succumbed to the disastrous conditions in the ghetto or were murdered in extermination camps as part of the “Reinhardt operation”.
None of the people deported on this transport are known to have survived.
About the image series
An unknown photographer secretly took the black-and-white photograph in landscape format from an elevated and distanced position either on April 3 or on April 4, 1942. The photograph, which has survived as a reproduction only, shows no less than seventy-five people compelled to line up with their hand luggage on the site of the Regensburg synagogue which was destroyed and demolished in 1938. Guarded by police officers in uniform, they seem to be called up one by one to either leave the square one by one or enter the assembly camp. None of the people on the photograph are known by name.
The photo was taken in secret from an elevated position some distance away from the scene itself.
Photographer
The photo was taken from one of the houses opposite in Schäffnerstrasse (today: Am Brixener Hof). Presumably, one of the people living there took the photo. The photographer’s motive for taking the picture is not known.
Andreas Angerstorfer assumed that "a bank director, from his apartment opposite, took the last photo" of Regensburg Jews. Although there was an apartment above the bank, this very building can be seen on the photo.
Provenance
Acknowledgements
Many thanks for having provided valuable information to Katharina Lenz relating to the position of the photographer and to Dr Sebastian Schott from the Weiden town archives relating to the group of people on the picture.
