Concentration Camp Transfers
Auschwitz to Sachsenhausen, November 27, 1944

by Peter Landé

Introduction

One of the problems genealogists face in seeking to determine the fate of an individual in the Holocaust is that, while they may know the name of a camp to which that person was initially deported, unless it is a death camp, they cannot be sure whether that person died in that camp.  In fact, while transfers between concentration camps were common, few such transport lists have been computerized.

To illustrate this, I have taken one such transport, which arrived in Sachsenhausen on November 27, 1944 from Auschwitz.  I have chosen this list since it included 356 young Jewish males, of various nationalities.  I have not sought to determine what happened to these persons after their arrival in Sachsenhausen, whether they died there, were transferred or survived.  Given the relatively late stage in World War II, and the young age of the persons in this transport, there is a fair chance that many of them survived, whether in Sachsenhausen or elsewhere.  Researchers seeking information from Sachsenhausen should contact the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen, Strasse der Nationen 22, 16515 Oranienburg, Germany.  Researchers should be aware that Sachsenhausen files are incomplete, having been seized by the Russians at the end of World War II, and only recently partially returned.

My other reason for choosing to computerize this particular transport list, from the hundreds of transports for which records exist, was that it comes from a collection which is extremely difficult to access.  This list was taken from a microfilmed collection obtained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) from the Osobyi Archives in Moscow.  The Russians had seized these records and much more from Sachsenhausen, and until recently had not permitted other institutions to have access to it.  At present, other than the USHMM, the Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen, and perhaps Yad Vashem, copies are not available.

The fields included in this list are as follows:

• Family Name
• Given Name
• Date of Birth
• Prisoner Number
• Nationality

The nationalities of the 356 prisoners are: 4 Belgian, 1 Croat, 2 Czech, 11 Dutch, 18 French, 2 Greek, 122 Hungarian, 4 Italian, 186 Polish, 5 "stateless", and one unknown.

Acknowledgements

The information contained in this database is transcribed from Reel 84 of RG 11.001M at the USHMM.  In addition, we owe our most sincere gratitude to Peter Landé, without whose effort this information would not be available to you today.

Searching the Database

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