From mid July 1942 till the end of February 1943, 52 trains have left for Auschwitz. Not all occupants arrived in Auschwitz. In the period of 28 August till 8 December 1942, 18 of the 28 deportation trains from Westerbork were stopped in Kozel, ± 80 km before Auschwitz and there boys and men between ± 15 and 50 years were forced to leave the train; they ended up in labor camps near Kozel, which a year and a half later became “Aussenkommandos” (extern commands) from Auschwitz or Gross-Rosen. Of the ± 3450 men only 181 have survived those labourcamps.
Schöppinitz was one of these labour camps for Jewish forced labourers. There is little information about the camp. Work was done here for the Haage Company on the construction of the Berlin-Krakow railway. The camp was openend in October 1942 and closed at the end of October/beginning of November 1943.
Approximately 400 people from Westerbork arrived in Schöppinitz at the end of October 1942; there, the guards were so-called “Volksduitsers”, “who were not inferior to the SS…… one Command was just as bad here as the other…… The work cost the necessary casualties every day”- it happened that Jews who worked here threw themselves in desperation for a locomotive or a train. “We didn’t have gloves…… Work had to be done here, even though the iron stuck to your hands from the cold”.
Sources: L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog 1939-1945 Volume 8, 2nd part, page 708 and up from page 790. Further: http://www.deutschland-ein-denkmal.de