To deport people to ghettos, concentration camps, labor camps, and death camps, the German government had an intricate transportation network. Methods of transport ranged from horse-drawn wagons to river barges, but most prisoners were deported on freight trains.
The trains normally used for this purpose consisted of cars of the “Karlsruhe” model — fifteen-ton box-cars built of wood and steel, with sliding doors and small, high windows which were covered with barbed wire. The German guards pushed 80 to 120 people into each of these cars, and locked the doors behind them. They provided little or no food and water, and often just one bucket per car for bodily waste. In the summer, the heat in the cars was suffocating, and often, in the northern European winters, the temperature was below freezing.
The overloaded trains traveled at about thirty miles per hour, and were frequently delayed or rerouted because of military activity or damaged tracks. Consequently, a train trip from Hungary to Poland could take days, while people being deported from Greece or France might be in transit for a week or longer. Countless thousands of people died as a result of these conditions.
