Transport 1 from Wien, Vienna, Austria to Opole, Pulawy, Lublin, Poland on 15/02/1941

Transport number 1 left Vienna for Opole in the General Government on February 15, 1941. The transport consisted of 1,001 Jews. 202 deportees were older than 61, the average age of the deportees was 48 years. Several days prior to the transport, the Jewish community had received a communiqué from the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna listing the people chosen for deportation. The task of notifying the Jews of the date of the transport was the responsibility of the community. The community also had to ensure that the deportees arrive on time at the Jewish-owned school building on Castellezgasse 35. The responsibility for providing the deportees with bare essentials and some food for their journey and for their stay on the school premises was imposed upon the Jewish community. At the school, representatives of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna forced the deportees to sign a document confirming that they were leaving of their own free will and were handing over their property to the state. According to the plan, the list of deportees was to include stateless Jews and émigrés. At this stage, mixed-race families (one of the parents was non-Jewish) with children were exempt from deportation, as were severely handicapped WWI invalids, Jews with foreign nationality, state pensioners, sick and handicapped residents of retirement homes or patients in the Rothschild Hospital. Nonetheless, the transport consisted mainly of people aged sixty and more, including some who were blind, sick and mute, as well as war invalids....