77 years since first transport to death camps

On Monday, Slovaks are commemorating the 77^th anniversary of the first transport of Slovak Jews to the death camps. On March 25, 1942, a thousand girls and young women were sent in a cargo train from the north-eastern Slovak town of Poprad to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. The first wave of the deportations of Slovak Jews to concentration camps ended in October 1942. The second phase of deportations from Slovakia started in September 1944 after the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising against the fascist regime. By the end of WWII, over 71,000 citizens of the Slovak state, a puppet of Nazi Germany, had been sent to the death camps.