Why didn't more Jews and others escape from the trains on their way to the death camps?


 


Because it was nearly impossible. I have personally met one person who escaped a transport: my grandfather's best friend jumped off the truck that was taking him from the Fossoli transit camp to the station whence he would be put on a train to some camp (probably Dachau), and he jumped off the truck to rejoin his partisan brigade. But he was a bit of an exception. Most of those who tried weren’t able to pull it off, and most were even unable to try.The train cars weren’t open. People were crammed in small cargo cars, whose doors were locked. These cars had only a couple tiny windows with metal nets or barbed wire strewn across. Lacking tools it was nearly impossible to unlock the train car from the inside, cut the barbed wire from the windows, or break through a thick wooden wall or floor to gain an exit. Also, if the guards found that a car was being manumitted, they would proceed to just kill everyone inside, while the car was so packed that people didn’t usually have space to work: there was barely space enough to stand. The cars were usually locked on departure and only unlocked on arrival. The inmates had a single bucket of water, so that after a few hours they were extremely thirsty. Only occasionally, maybe after a couple of days, the doors were opened to refill the buckets and to drop out the bodies of those who had not survived the voyage.


This does not mean that no attempts were made. Some 750 Jews and probably as many non-Jews survived thus. Sometimes they did just like my grandfather’s late friend and managed to jump off the train or a truck that was taking them to the train and get scarce, sometimes they would open gap in the barbed wire and throw off the children hoping they would be able to evade capture on their own, some smuggled in tools and were able to dig a hole in the floor and slid out. Once escaped, though, the problem was surviving the escape. The guards would shoot anyone they saw running, and even if you escaped the guards you were in a territory that you didn’t know, where people spoke a different language, you were likely filthy and emaciated, and often with clothes bearing stars or other marks that made you easily recognizable. And Nazis gave prizes to delators.

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