Three trains left Bergen Belsen between April 6 and April 11, 1945. They were the last transports out of the camp before it was liberated by British soldiers on April 15 and, together, these trains carried about 6,700 people.
Although they didn’t know it at the time, these prisoners were a part of a group of over 20,000 Jews that Adolf Eichmann agreed to “put on ice” so they could be exchanged at some point for food, money, or German prisoners of war. They were deported to Strasshof, and then sent to work as slave laborers in factories and on farms.
In December 1944, 4,200 Hungarian Jews—those who had worked on farms—were sent to Bergen Belsen. They were housed in a section fenced off from the rest of the camp, known as the “Hungarian Camp.” Another larger, similar section—the “Star Camp”—had Jews from other countries who were to be exchanged. Paul had always wondered why the SS allowed them to keep the molasses that the farmers gave them. Now we know that conditions in these exchange camps were slightly better than in other sections. Children up to the age of 14 stayed with their mothers, and prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes and keep their possessions.
Only a few hundred prisoners from those camps were actually exchanged. The rest ended up on the three trains. One train delivered its Jewish cargo to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, where survivors were liberated on May 8, 1945.
Another train seemed to drop off the map. It left Bergen Belsen on April 11 and spent two weeks zigzagging through Germany in an effort to avoid the approaching Allied armies. It was freed by the Russian army in the small German town of Tröbitz on April 23. Of the 2,700 people on that train, over 600 died during the trip and after liberation.
The train that the Auslanders were on left Bergen Belsen on April 9 and was liberated by American troops near Farsleben, Germany, on April 13. For over fifty years, copies of the pictures that George Gross took that day remained in a shoebox in Carrol Walsh’s closet. After his interview with Matt Rozell, he found them and Matt posted them on his website. George Gross had said that what impressed him the most when he took the pictures were the brave smiles of the newly liberated children. In his own words:
I was assigned to stay overnight with the train, to let any stray German soldiers know that it was part of the free world and not to be bothered again. I was honored to shake the hands of the large numbers [of survivors] who spontaneously lined up to introduce themselves and greet me in a ritual that seemed to satisfy their need to declare their return to honored membership in the free society of humanity.
That ritual was repeated—this time with hugs and tears—over six decades later when survivors and soldiers reunited at the symposium in Hudson Falls High School.