The Leipzig-Dresden railway line through time

Every train dispatched from cities to the camps was logged by the rail authorities. The Leipzig - Dresden line had many such trains passing along it to the subsidiary camps of Leipzig, Markkleeberg, Taucha, Schönau and Colditz to the principal concentration camp close to Weimar at Buchenwald. Other subsidiary camps of another principal camp at Flossenburg to the south of Saxony were Dresden and Hossen. Further down the Elbe across the border in Czechoslovakia was another principal camp at Theresienstadt that would have involved Jews from France and the west being brought along the Leipzig - Dresden railway line.

A railway account in 1942 reported that:

"Without the involvement of the railway it would not have been possible to take the decision to carry out the final solution."

Exact details of all who travelled on the railways to the concentration camps included their name, first name, marital status, date of birth and address. The SS paid the railway for all the transportation:

"For the transportation of 960 persons on 22.4.42 with the DA52 from Düsseldorf - Deren station to Izbica. 28,320 Reichsmark."

Heiner Lichtenstein, a writer detailed how financial considerations played a considerable role in encouraging SS and railway co-operation:

"The railway also could use wagons not fit for the transport of troops or war materials."

The railway authorities were not concerned if the trains broke down on route because the railway was still making an income from trains and carriages that they would normally have scrapped. Many diaries exist of appalling journeys undertaken by Jews and other prisoners being moved to concentration camps. Journeys took days as the trains were often put in sidings to let other traffic on the railways have priority. One description of a journey from Dachau near München to Auschwitz was interrupted by an enforced stop in Dresden:

"We were led over busy platforms. In our prisoner's clothing we are conspicuous to everyone. I look at the faces of the passers-by, try to read their thoughts. I find no sympathetic gaze. They look at us as if we are criminals. Are all Germans on the side of the SS?"

Each Jew being transported had to pay the Gestapo 65RM and hand over all their valuables including the key and address of their home in an envelope. They were instructed:

"...to leave the rooms of the house in a clean condition; to take care that water, gas and electric lights are switched off."

Then they were taken to the nearest station and loaded onto the trains en route for the concentration camp, all of which had direct train connection and their own stations. The following description is from Jeanette Wolff, a socialist member of the Bunderstag:

"On 25 January 1942 at 4 o'clock in the morning we were taken via detours to the northside of the station, where we were herded into absolutely filthy 4th class carriages whose toilets were frozen. Carriages were not even of use for troop transport. Pushed together we squatted in the unheated carriages ,only the carriages of the accompanying soldiers and of the Gestapo people were heated. We did not know where we were being taken. It was a particularly cold winter. Several old and sick people froze to death during the journey. There was very deep snow. Locked in unheated carriages, without anything warm, without food we travelled for five days and nights."

Prisoners of war were also transported around Germany by rail, and many Allied escapees from other prisoner of war camps were recaptured and ended up passing through Leipzig on their way to Colditz. This medieval castle, fifteen kilometres south of the main line, was converted into a high security detention centre. It was only a ten minute march from Colditz station on a branch line off the Leipzig - Dresden line to the forbidding castle.

"But for the three changes, one of which entails an hour's wait on an extremely draughty platform, we are comfortable enough. Our main direction is towards Dresden, but the last change brings us onto a branch line which meanders and winds like a rock-bound stream. Colditz, the station at which we finally arrive at half-past six in the evening, is under the pall of blackout, and is hardly exciting to city hungry-people. There is no conveyance for our luggage, but the guards assure us that the Schloss is not far distant."

The castle at Colditz was designated, Sonderlager, by the Germans and was reserved for prisoners of war who had already made escapes and many potentially important prisoners. These Prominente were usually peers, members of the royal family or related to Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, all of whom the Germans viewed as potential hostages. The railway was used to supply the castle and Red Cross parcels came into the camp by the train from Switzerland and Denmark. The town also had a concentration camp for Hungarian prisoners and Platt recounts how other refugee trains passed along the branch line, which they could observe from the windows of the castle:

Friday 26 January 1945
"Being a refugee in midwinter - and a severe winter - is very terrible, the refugee train we saw arrive today at Colditz from Breslau is too painful to think of. Women and children had been in the trucks two days and nights without food -except what they had with them - or fire. Some small children were frozen to death, and not all of those who survived are expected to recover. Many adults had suffered frost-bite to their face and feet. They looked a heart-rending sight trudging brokenly across the bridge. Some carried small bundles, but some could scarcely carry themselves. I saw several officers turn away from the Schloss windows with a pain where fighting men feel most pain. Women and children are women and children - be they Polish, Dutch, Russian or German."

The bombing of Germany by British and American planes wrought immense damage to the rail network because of its strategic importance. Leipzig was a major target throughout the bombing campaign, but the most tragic blow was struck against Dresden in 1945. In February of that year as the Russian troops were advancing through Poland a major series of raids laid waste to the city. The railway station was a scene of immense destruction and many thousands died in the carnage. Kurt Vonnegut, the author, wrote Slaughterhouse 5 detailing his horrific experiences in the bombing and the subsequent fire storm.

"And the sun went down, and Billy found himself bobbing in place in a railroad yard. There were rows and rows of boxcars waiting. They had brought reserves to the front. Now they were going to take prisoners into Germany's interior. Billy Pilgrim was packed into a boxcar with many other privates. Germans were writing on the cars with blue chalk - the number of persons in each car, their rank, their nationality, the date on which they had been put aboard. The train had arrived on a siding by a prison that was originally constructed as an extermination camp for Russians prisoners of war . The Americans arrived in Dresden at five in the morning. The boxcar doors were opened and the doorways framed the loveliest city that most of the Americans had seen. Every other big city had been bombed and burned ferociously. Dresden had not suffered so much as a cracked window pane."

Once in Dresden, Kurt Vonnegut, Billy, was moved from the railway sidings to a nearby slaughterhouse.

"Billy was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were sounds like giant footsteps above. Those were sticks of high-explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. The meat locker was a very safe shelter. A guard would go to the head of the stairs every so often to see what it was like outside, then he would come down and whisper to the other guards. There was a fire storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn."

Over 100,000 citizens of Dresden probably lost their lives in the fire storm, the centre of Dresden was destroyed. February 13 and 14 were momentous for the people of Dresden as their city was destroyed, communications shattered only five days after American and British troops had reached the Rhine on their drive east. Many buildings were built of wood and over 80,000 homes were destroyed. 250,000 were left without homes, including refugees who had been fleeing from the advancing Russians to the east. The main station in Dresden, the Hauptbahnhof, was filled with starving people. A young woman, Eva Beyer tells of her work for the Red Cross on the trains:

"There were so many refugees from Silesia and Wartegau. My task was to give them soup, bread, coffee and milk. What I saw there of the suffering and misery can hardly be described. There were women, old men and children in a condition that was not human any more. As I walked along the train to distribute food, a woman came and begged me for milk for her child. I asked her where her child was, and she unfolded her apron and showed me the child, I wasn't a doctor but I could see that the child was dead; it was stiff and blue and must have been dead for several days."

A justification in February 1945 for the bombing was that Dresden was a main communication centre, but the main railway line from Leipzig was some distance from the city centre and the important bridges carrying the line over the Elbe were not badly hit during any of the bombing. It was also a major heritage centre with picture galleries built up by the Saxony Royal family and other priceless treasures in museums and libraries. There were also many prisoners of war at Stalag IVb at Mülhberg who were sent daily into Dresden in work parties. Kurt Vonnegut was such a prisoner. When the first wave of British bombers arrived, the inhabitants of Dresden were getting ready to celebrate Shrove Tuesday night. The station was very busy and the 10.00pm train had pulled to halt just as it was about to leave. Giesla-Alexandra Moeltgen was leaving the city after receiving treatment at the hospital:

"Word got round that the train had to be vacated at once - but the planes were already over the town. Many optimists stayed so as to secure a good seat, but I broke the window - it was only made of cardboard - grabbed the handbag in which I carried my jewellery grabbed my fur, too, and got through the window. The others followed suit. We ran along the completely blacked-out platform in the dark and found that all the barriers were closed. Over the barriers, then! The police wanted us to go into the already overcrowded air raid shelter at the station, but we had only one urge - out, and away from that station! How right we were, was borne out by the fact that over 3,000 dead were found in the station and 300 dead on my train alone - all burnt to death!"

Some three hours later a second force of British bombers, some five hundred planes, guided from one hundred miles away by the flames of the burning city, bombed the city for a second time that February night. Hugo Eichhorn, a German engineer went into the city after the first raid while the fire storm was still raging, he reached the Hauptbahnhof:

"And in and around the main railway station we found nothing but dead, maimed, torn or burnt people."

Some twelve hours later a third bombing raid was carried out by three hundred American bombers. Annemarie Waehmann, a patient at the Friedrichstadt hospital was urged to make her way out of the city past the main station.

"Desperately, we fought our way through to the station. There the corpses were piled up in heaps: two metres high, five metres wide and five metres long. A sweetish smell came from the heap. Many of them had jumped as burning torches into the water reservoirs, and more and more had followed them one on top of another, so that they were all drowned."

The station and railway were badly affected but both the Elbe bridge and the vast marshalling yards were relatively lightly hit. In fact within three days of the first British raid the line to Leipzig was back in full operation. 75 kilometres away at the prisoner of war camp at Colditz, the padre's diary recorded the following:

Wednesday 14 February 1945
"Some say it was the largest raid ever, some say it was four successive raids, but bombs were falling from 9.30pm until dawn. The nearest target would have been twenty to thirty miles away, but the blast here was almost unbelievable. The main gates shook as though a giant was trying to get in and almost succeeded in shaking them down. Standing watching at the open windows it was like an idiotic gale in our faces. We saw the fires flare up, making grotesque shadows among the clouds, and followed by columns of smoke glowering angry and red. One stick of bombs fell too close for comfort and the old Schloss rocked, dropping dust and plaster. Fires were all around us."

The diary continues two days later:

Friday 16 February
"Rumour says that 100,000 people were killed in the raid on Dresden, (there has been no statement in the press), and that two hundred prisoners are due to arrive on Monday or Tuesday next week."

The proximity of the railway line to the castle gave excellent opportunities for observing what was going on outside but also worried the prisoners:

Tuesday 13 March 1945
"Refugees still going SW. The branch line to Leipzig running through Colditz is in use now for heavy trains - military traffic is quite frequent: much, I should say, to the distress of a sleepy country-line signalman - and we fear it may prove attractive to some of the American formations of Fortresses that pass over here. The railway is much too close for our comfort."

Some Colditz prisoners were sent for medical inspections in early April and their visit to Leipzig coincided with a heavy bombing raid by Allied planes:

"When Clive and Teddy emerged from the shelter the air was thick and acrid. Fires were raging, and in several places horses' entrails, feet, heads and legs were splashed about. No one treated them unkindly, or spoke disparagingly of Britain, America or anyone. They had to walk several kilometres down what had been the railway track from what had been the largest station in Europe before they reached the point from which a train could travel."

Leipzig was heavily bombed along with the marshalling yard, frequent flights of allied bombers made the journey deep into Germany. In 1991, one woman interviewed in Leipzig had started work at Leipzig station in 1941, she recounted how she had been one of only ten women collecting tickets. Much of the station had been blocked off by barriers. Bombing was frequent, a tunnel was being built and this was used for sheltering during the bombing raids. She remembered once going down into the half completed tunnel and emerging some hours later to find the station almost totally destroyed. The damage caused to the station took many years to repair although it did not seriously affect the passage of trains.

The station was extensively used to relocate people from the Jewish quarter - to the concentration camps. Many of the Leipzig population knew what was going as they saw the loaded cattle trucks leaving the station loaded with Jews bound for concentration camps in the east and for most, death.

Russian troops from the east arrived in Dresden on 8 May and met with advancing American troops from the west at Torgau on the Elbe, 50 kilometres from Dresden, a few days later. Most the city centre of Dresden was to stay as a bombed out ruin for several decades. The war was nearly at an end and after 74 years the united Germany was soon to be riven asunder by the Allies.