Vienna to Lodz Transports "Missing Individuals" Investigation
Introduction by Sonya Davidson

BACKGROUND

The purpose of this exercise was to try to answer the question, “Where did all the people in the Lodz Ghetto come from?”  We know there were people living in Lodz and we know there were numerous transports into the Ghetto.  But an initial review of some of the transport lists compared to the names of inhabitants of the Ghetto came up with surprising results.  There were people transported that were not included in the Ghetto list and vice versa.  What happened to these “missing” people?

To answer this question, I took a global view. I didn’t trace individuals, I started by tracing trainloads of individuals who were transported from Vienna to Lodz.  I used transport lists mostly from Yad Vashem’s listing of total Lodz residents (265,000). Why has no one done this? Yad Vashem has the most digital records of transports from Vienna to Lodz, but they did not have records from Dusseldorf or Frankfurt.  I found those at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. I focused on transports of 1,000 people or more from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Dusseldorf and Frankfort.

Several things became apparent. First, not everyone transported to Lodz ended up in the Lodz list of residents. Percentages of those transported compared to the Lodz residents list varied from 14% to 66%. Where did they go? Only 366 people from Yad Vashem’s Lodz residents list were from the 5,013 people transported there. I went through each one comparing to the list and found 2,785. But also, it did not account for 2,268 people on the various transport lists. Where are the missing people? I continued to research the lists of transported people through records at Yad Vashem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and JewishGen.

There are a number of possibilities. Among the possibilities, some people may have been transported to other ghettos or camps, some may have died along the way, some may have escaped, some may have died before they could be added to the residents’ list, and of course, there could be clerical errors on the lists I’m trying to reconcile.

Although my research continues, this database is the result of my efforts to find the “missing” individuals.  And the research continues.  If you are aware of individuals that are either not on my list or if you have additional information on the fate of any of these people, please contact me at sonyadesigns@yahoo.com.

DATABASE

This database includes 2,270 records of those on transports from Vienna to Lodz and what I’ve been able to determine.

The fields and sources for this database are as follows:

• Transport date of departure (From Yad Vashem sources)
• Transport place of departure (From Yad Vashem sources)
• Surname (JewishGen and Yad Vashem sources)
• Alternate surname (possible differences from research)
• Given name (JewishGen and Yad Vashem sources)
• Year of birth (JewishGen, Yad Vashem, and USHMM sources)
• Last residence (Yad Vashem sources)
• On Yad Vashem’s Lodz resident list (Yad Vashem residents’ list)
• Info found on a list from the USHMM (USHMM list of Lodz residents)
• Info found on a list from JewishGen (JewishGen list of Lodz residents)
• Results of testing
• Fate (Yad Vashem sources)
• Source (Yad Vashem)         

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The information contained in this database was provided by Sonya Davidson based on her original research work.  The source documents for her research are described in the “Database” section of this introduction.  Sonya presented her findings to the Simon Wiesenthal Genealogical Geo Location Initiative (SWIGGI) on their webinar in April 2025. For more information, please contact Sonya at sonyadesigns@yahoo.com.

Thank you to Nolan Altman, Director of Data Acquisition and Coordinator of Holocaust Database, for his continued devotion and dedication to JewishGen's important work.  

Searching the Database

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Holocaust Database or the JewishGen Unified Search

August 2025