Fatherland

                     1720        Auschwitz          1048
                  Lp 110     Auschwitz                               Myslowitz
    2/3        Po 65       Zamocz                   1100        Auschwitz
    2/4        Lp 16       Auschwitz                               Litzmannstadt
    And so on until, in the second week of February, a new destination appeared. Now almost all the times had been worked out to the minute:

    2/11     Pj131       Bialystok                 900          Treblinka                  1210
                  Lp 132     Treblinka                2118        Bialystok                   130
    2/12     Pj 133      Bialystok                 900          Treblinka                  1210
                  Lp 134     Treblinka                2118        Grodno
    2/13     Pj 135      Bialystok                 900          Treblinka                  1210
                  Lp 136     Treblinka                2118       Bialystok                   130
    2/14     Pj 163      Grodno                   540          Treblinka                  1210
                  Lp 164     Treblinka                                Scharfenwiese
    And so on again until the end of the month.
    A rusty paper clip had mottled the edge of the timetable. Attached to it was a telegram from the General Management, Directorate East of the German Reich Railways, dated Berlin, January 13, 1943. First, a list of recipients:

Reich Railway Directorates

Berlin, Breslau, Dresden, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Halle (S),

Karlsruhe, Königsberg (Pr), Linz, Mainz, Oppeln, East in Frankfurt (O), Posen, Vienna

General Directorate of East Railway in Krakau

Reichsprotektor, Group Railways in Prague

General Traffic Directorate Warsaw

Reich Traffic Directorate Minsk
    Then, the main text:

Subject: Special trains for resettlers during the period from January 20 to February 28, 1943.

We enclose a compilation of the special trains (Vd, Rm, Po, Pj and Da) agreed upon in Berlin on January 15, 1943 for the period from January 20, 1943 to February 28, 1943 and a circulatory plan for cars to be used in these trains.

Train formation is noted for each recirculation and attention is to be paid to these instructions. After each full trip, cars are to be well cleaned, if necessary fumigated, and upon completion of the program prepared for further use. Number and kinds of cars are to be determined upon dispatch of the last train and are to be reported to me by telephone with confirmation on service cards.

[Signed] Dr. Jacobi

33 Bfp 5 Bfsv

Minsk, February 9, 1943
    March flicked back to the timetable and read it through again. Theresienstadt-Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Theresienstadt, Bialystok-Treblinka, Treblinka-Bialystok: the syllables drummed in his tired brain like the rhythm of wheels on a railway track.
    He ran his finger down the columns of figures, trying to decipher the message behind them. So: a train would be loaded in the Polish town of Bialystok at breakfast time. By lunchtime it would be at this hell, Treblinka. (Not all the journeys were so brief—he shuddered at the thought of the seventeen hours from Berlin to Auschwitz.) In the afternoon, the cars would be unloaded at Treblinka and fumigated. At nine that evening they would return to Bialystok, arriving in the early hours, ready to be loaded up again at breakfast.
    On February 12 the pattern broke. Instead of going back to Bialystok, the empty train was sent to Grodno. Two days in the sidings there, and then—in the dark, long before dawn—the train was once more heading back, fully laden, to Treblinka. It arrived at lunchtime. Was unloaded. And that night began rattling back westward again, this time to Scharfenweise.
    What else could an investigator of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei deduce from this document?
    Well, he could deduce numbers. Say: sixty persons per car, an average of sixty cars per train. Deduction: three thousand six hundred persons per transport.
    By February, the transports were running at