Transport XX

Résumé éditeur

Discusses transport 20, which departed from Malines for Auschwitz on 19 April 1943, the same day the Warsaw ghetto uprising began. Pp. 9-24, "L'exception du vingtième transport de Malines à Auschwitz", by Maxime Steinberg, examine the uniqueness of this train. It was the only one, among the thousands of trains transporting Jews to death camps throughout occupied Europe, that was subjected to an outside attempt to free some of the deportees. Inspired by the ghetto uprising, Jewish medical student Georges Livschitz of the Comité de Defense des Juifs, aided by two non-Jewish members of the Belgian resistance, stopped the train close to Boortmeerbeck ca. 15 kilometers from Malines. Of the 1,613 deportees on board, 231 managed to flee, but 87 were recaptured and deported and 26 were killed while fleeing. Pp. 35-46, "Les déportés du vingtème transport de Malines à Auschwitz", by Laurence Schram, trace the fate of the 1,404 deportees who reached Auschwitz according to Nazi plans and mostly lost their lives there. Pp. 26-33 and 48-56 contain documents relating to transport 20