Even before Kristallnacht, tens of thousands of Jews living in Germany but whose origins were East European had been deported. The expulsion from the Reich of Jews holding Polish passports was known as the Zbaszyn deportation. On the evening of October 27, the German authorities began to arrest these Jews in order to banish them to Poland. They were thereupon transported immediately to the Polish border and literally dumped there - without their possessions and without even an opportunity to put their affairs in order. The deportees spent months in the border area in limbo, because the Poles, too, were unwilling to accept them.
