The list contains the names of children aged six to twelve sent from Bialystok to Theresienstadt, and then to Auschwitz by order of Adolf Eichmann; the children were killed on the Erev Yom Kippur, 7 October 1943. [1]
Transport of Białystok Children
On August 16, 1943, the Nazis entered the Bialystok Ghetto and with the help of tanks and artillery started the ultimate annihilation of the remaining 40,000 Jews.
On Tuesday, 17th of August 1943, the Bialystok Ghetto was in flames after an uprising was started by the Jews who were being deported out of the Ghetto to their annihilation in Treblinka. The SS selected 2,000 children, tearing them away from their parents.
On Friday August 20th, 1943, after the Germans suppressed the uprising, the children were taken in trains out of Bialystok and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp. They arrived in Theresienstadt about three days later. It is rumored the underground forces were negotiating for the release of these children along with others up to 10,000. But this deal required money and when it was not secured, the children were boarded on another train.
On 5 October, they were told that they would be sent to Switzerland in exchange for German prisoners of war. This was not the case since money was never given nor a prisoner exchange for the children. Instead, the train went to the Auschwitz concentration camp where all were murdered in gas chambers.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, October 7, 1943, 1,196 children from Bialystok Ghetto in Poland, and 53 doctors and nurses from the Terezin Ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who accompanied them to the end, were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz the day they arrived.