Mistaken by Nazi administrators for deported Jews, a trainload of German refugees from Hamburg were exterminated by Gestapo officials in the “death chambers” of a Jewish concentration camp near Lwow, the Manchester Evening Chronicle reports today.
The report, reaching the Manchester paper from a person inside Germany, states that the train with the German refugees arrived at its destination in the camp a few days after the last Jewish inmates of that camp were executed to make room for new arrivals. The administration of the camp was not informed that the new arrivals would be Germans from devastated Hamburg. They took it for granted that the new transport consists of Jewish deportees who ought to be dealt with along the usual routine of extermination.
When the train arrived, the hungry and exhausted German refugees looked not much different from the hungry and exhausted Jews who have always been brought to this camp to their death in gas chambers. The Gestapo guards lost no time in stripping the newcomers naked and in sending them into “gas chambers” under the usual pretext that they were to take a bath and be “deloused” from the long trip which they had made.
The mistake was not brought to light until the railway authorities started inquiries regarding some of the cars in the refugee train. It was then discovered that the train carried Germans and not Jews.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
