Deportations

Scope and content

Sub-collection DE ITS 1.2.1.1 Deportations contains the majority of the documents collected by the predecessor organizations of the Arolsen Archives with regard to the deportations of Jews from the German Reich, Austria and Bohemia and Moravia (NS terminology). There are also a few sources concerning the deportation of those persecuted as “gypsies” (including Sinti and Roma).

The bulk of the lists contained were compiled by the Secret State Police (Gestapo) and State Police Headquarters (in short: Stapoleitstellen) for the preparation and realization of the deportations (for the most part) after the Wannsee Conference from 1942 onwards.

Documented are (listed here in the order of the sub-collections) deportations from the 23 Gestapo areas of Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Cologne, Kaiserslautern, Koblenz, Trier, Vienna, Dresden, Chemnitz, Hamburg, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Wroclaw, Bytom, Dortmund, Münster, Frankfurt/Main, Württemberg and Baden, Königsberg, Szczecin, Kassel, Leipzig, Darmstadt, Opole, Usti nad Labem (Aussig), Magdeburg, Karlovy Varly (Carlsbad) and Gdansk.

The planning, organization and realization of the deportations was a complex bureaucratic process involving numerous actors. This is reflected in the diversity of the documents contained. Among other things, included are:
• Lists and directories with details of persons affected by deportation, compiled by various Jewish institutions,
• Gestapo transport lists or deportation lists, which were usually confiscation lists, as the responsible Vermögensverwertungsstelle (Property Transaction Office) organized the confiscation of Jewish property on the basis of these lists,
• relevant correspondence from the Stapo(leit)stellen,
• Lists of persons who committed suicide before their deportation,
• Extracts from lists, addressed to various state NS authorities
• Entry lists from the Theresienstadt Ghetto and
• Post-war constellations on deportees and deportations.

In rare cases, included are lists that were created with a view to planning and carrying out the targeted killing of Jewish patients in so-called sanatoriums and nursing homes ("T4 actions"/ "euthanasia").

The sub-collection VCC.155.XIII on deportations from the area of Württemberg and Baden contains a detailed documentation of the so-called Polenaktion on October 28 and 29, 1938 from the Karlsruhe area. It contains lists and correspondence concerning the preparation and realization of the deportation of Jewish persons with (former) Polish citizenship to the Polish-German border in the autumn of 1938. Also recorded are the debates of various Nazi organizations concerning the further whereabouts of the persons concerned, which lasted until the summer of 1939. Also documented for Karlsruhe is the so-called "Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich" in July 1938, in which Jewish men were arrested, but above all those persecuted as so-called asocial persecutees.

In the case of Leipzig and Arnstadt (VCC.155.XVI) included are registration cards concerning Jews and Sinti and Roma (persecuted as "Gypsies") who were registered in these cities during the Nazi era.

Sub-collection 1.2.1.1 contains originals, especially with regard to the deportations from Berlin (VCC.155.I), as well as copies, reproductions and excerpts from various sources. It is partially indexed. The originals of the so-called “transport lists” (VCC.155.I), which the Berlin Stapoleitstelle prepared for the Oberfinanzpräsidium (Chief Financial Officer), are fully indexed. Complex geographical data, such as the addresses of the apartments or assembly camps where the persons concerned stayed until shortly before the deportation, were also recorded.