On March 25, 1942 the first transport of Slovak Jews left the Poprad railway station headed for the concentration camp in Auschwitz.
Wagons originally intended to transport cattle we filled with 1000 young women and girls from the Šariš-Zemplín County. After passing through Žilina and Čadca it arrived in Auschwitz concentration camp in the afternoon of March 26, 1942. According to witness testimonies, about 20 young girls from the first transport survived the imprisonment.
This first wave of transports from Slovakia continued until October 20, 1942. The Slovak State got rid of a total of 57,628 Jewish citizens, for each of whom they had to pay the Germans a so-called settlement fee of 500 Reich marks.
During the Nazi occupation of Slovakia in 1944 the second wave of transports started. The first of them was sent on September 30, 1944 from Sered (where the Museum of the Holocaust is now located).
In total more than 70,000 Jewish citizens died in concentration camps as a result of transportation from the territory of Slovakia.
Source: Ústav pamäti národa UPN.gov.sk
