Destination Unknown Painting

This painting is dedicated to people who died traveling to unknown destinations on cattle trains and today inside refrigerated trucks. "The first trains with German Jews expelled to ghettos in occupied Poland began departing from central Germany on 16 October 1941. Called Sonderzüge (special trains), the trains had low priority for the movement and would proceed to the mainline only after all other transports went through, inevitably extending transport time beyond expectations. The trains consisted of sets of either third class passenger carriages, but mainly freight cars or cattle cars or both; the latter packed with up to 150 deportees, although 50 was the number proposed by the SS regulations. No food or water was supplied. The Güterwagen boxcars were fitted with only a bucket latrine. A small barred window provided irregular ventilation, which oftentimes resulted in multiple deaths from either suffocation or exposure to the elements. Some freight cars had a layer of quick lime on the floor. At times, the Germans did not have enough filled cars ready to start a major shipment of Jews to the camps, so the victims were kept locked inside overnight at layover yards. The Holocaust trains also waited for more important military trains to pass. An average transport took about four days. The longest transport of the war, from Corfu, took 18 days. When the train arrived at the camp and the doors were opened, everyone was already dead. Due to delays and cramped conditions, many deportees died in transit. On 18 August 1942, Waffen SS officer Kurt Gerstein had witnessed at Belzec the arrival of "45 wagons with 6,700 people, of whom 1,450 were already dead on arrival". That train came with the Jews of the Lwów Ghetto, less than 100 kilometres (62 mi) away."

Painting:Watercolor on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:28 W x 22 H x 0.1 D in

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