Wiesbaden Hauptbahnhof is a railway station for the city of Wiesbaden, the state capital of the German state of Hesse. It is a terminal station at the southern edge of the city centre and is used by more than 40,000 travelers each day, so it is the second largest station in Hesse after Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

The Deportation of the Jews of Wiesbaden

In March, May and June of 1942 some 500 Jews were deported from Wiesbaden, among them several rabbis. The deportees were led in groups down the city’s streets toward the local train station, loaded onto cattle cars, and sent to the Lublin district in Poland. After a layover in Piaski these Jews were sent to Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek, where they were murdered.

On the 11th of June 1942, more than 600 Jews from the district of Wiesbaden, mostly from the city itself, were loaded onto cattle cars and deported to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt, these Jews were deported together with 600 Jews from the Frankfurt community to the district of Lublin. Nearly two hundred of them were deported directly to Majdanek, and the rest were sent to Sobibor following a two-day stop in Izbicia. It is not known of anyone who survived this transport.

By the time of the next deportation, some 40 Jews in Wiesbaden had committed suicide.

On the 27th of August 1942, the last public prayer service was held in Wiesbaden. From the 27th to the 29th of August 1942, six hundred Jews, many of them elderly and weak, were collected in the courtyard of the Orthodox synagogue. The Jews were photographed at the collection point in front of the Orthodox synagogue, during their registration at the police station, and when they boarded the deportation train at the city’s train station. On the 29th of August the Jews of Wiesbaden were deported to Frankfurt, where another 600 local Jews boarded the train. On the 1st of September the train left Frankfurt, and it arrived in Theresienstadt the following day. The Jews on this transport were primarily elderly or sick people, as well as Jews who had been decorated or injured in World War I, and their families. Later, these Jews were deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Thirty-two Jews from this deportation survived the war.

The responsibility for liquidating the community’s assets was placed on Berthold Gutmann, a lawyer who was sent on the September 1st transport to Theresienstadt together with his son. The head of the Jewish community, Moritz Maxheimer, was also deported and was murdered in Auschwitz a month later. The secretary of the Jewish community, Arthur Strauss, was deported in March 1943 together with his wife Anna to Theresienstadt, from where he was deported in October 1944 to Auschwitz. Thirteen Jewish doctors from Wiesbaden were deported and perished as well, most of them in Theresienstadt. 

In December 1942, fewer than 200 residents of Jewish origin remained in Wiesbaden; most of them were “half” or “quarter” Jews, or Jews married to Aryans who had been defined by the regime as having extra privileges. In 1943 these Jews were added to the Frankfurt community. Twenty-five of them were deported to Theresienstadt in February of 1945.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Polish: Grób Nieznanego Żołnierza) is a monument in Warsaw, Poland, dedicated to the unknown soldiers who have given their lives for Poland. It is one of many such national tombs of unknowns that were erected after World War I, and the most important such monument in Poland.^[1]

The monument, located at Piłsudski Square, is the only surviving part of the Saxon Palace that occupied the spot until World War II. Since 2 November 1925 the tomb houses the unidentified body of a young soldier who fell during the Defence of Lwów. Since then, earth from numerous battlefields where Polish soldiers have fought has been added to the urns housed in the surviving pillars of the Saxon Palace.

During the 1939 invasion of Poland, the building was slightly damaged by German aerial bombing, but it was quickly rebuilt and seized by the German authorities. After the Warsaw Uprising, in December 1944, the palace was completely demolished by the Wehrmacht. Only part of the central colonnade, sheltering the Tomb, was preserved.

After the war, in late 1945, reconstruction began. Only a small part of the palace, containing the Tomb, was restored by Henryk Grunwald. On 8 May 1946 it was opened to the public. Soil from 24 additional battlegrounds was added to the urns, as well as more tablets with names of battles in which Poles had fought in World War II. However, the communist authorities erased all trace of the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, and only a few of the Polish Armed Forces’ battles in the West were included. This was corrected in 1990, after Poland had regained its political autonomy.

Here are a couple of photos of Saxon Square before the German destruction of the city.

An aerial view of the city after the war the Germans destroyed. The losses to Warsaw’s urban architecture at the beginning of 1945 were estimated at around 84%, with industrial infrastructure and historic monuments destroyed at 90% and residential buildings at 72%. After the Warsaw Uprising, a city which was home to over 1 million people before the war was almost deserted, with only a few thousand people living in its ruins.