As you certainly know, the inmates were transferred to Nazi concentration camps by trains. But little of us realised before how cruel and terrifying were the conditions of such transportation! People in the trucks were heading for a certain death.
It didn’t matter that such a truck could house no more than fifty persons, Nazis managed to fit there over 200 people! Indeed, over two hundred people in one truck. Try to imagine – one train with several dozen trucks containing 2 hundred drained people on the road for 18 days, with no food, no drink, no care.
This is how Nazis treated people. And let’s just add that the trains from Krakow and Germany were arriving every few hours! It means, that every day thousands of people were arriving at the death camp thinking they were heading for a new, better life! Oh, that was a new life, but was it better? It depends on who for.
Dying during such a trip was something normal, usual. Some died of starvation, some because of the heat, and finally, some of them were so tired that they were just passing away, one by one. Once when they were receiving a train from Greece, the guards opened the doors and you may not believe what they found there. In the truck, there was just a heap of perished people… I guess, there is no comment needed. Well, as it turns out, such a crazy trip to the ‘gates of hell’ was not a free service.
Nazis charged the passengers for the ride. For the ride to hell! After all the people were transferred to the ‘new, better work and life -place’. That was simple. They wanted to move, they needed to pay. That’s why all the Jews had to pay the fee for tickets. Shame that nobody told them they were going to an extermination camp! However, the Nazis were not so fully soulless though… they decided to not charge children under four for the transfers… What a generosity.