Jewish and Slave Transportation
Michael Gleason
Slave Transportation
Tight-Packing
Olaudah Equiano
Due to the poor conditions on board the ships and harsh treatment from slavers, a staggering number of slaves were killed while being transported across the Middle Passage. An estimated forty percent of slaves were killed from the time they were removed from their homes to the time they arrived at their destinations. (10) At least 2 million of these slaves died on the voyage from Africa to America. (11) The brutality and inhumanity of this transportation can only be mirrored by the transportation of persecuted Jews during the Holocaust.
Jewish Transportation
In 1942, Hitler and his Nazi government began deporting Jews to death camps set up mainly in Germany and Poland. (12) The most common method of transporting Jews from locations around Europe to the death camps was by train, and both passenger and freight cars were used. Germany tried to cover their tracks by saying they were relocating the Jews to work camps in the East. (13) However, the true reality was that Hitler was instituting his “Final Solution,” which was a form of ethnic cleansing which attempted to remove all inferior races, such as Jews and Gypsies, from Europe while establishing the Aryans as the superior race.
Victor Lewis
Those who survived deportation and the rest of the Holocaust lived to tell the grim details of their rides on the trains and lives in the Holocaust. Victor Lewis, who survived the Holocaust by jumping out of a transport train window, tells a story that displays the true savageness of the situation:
“There was no water and very little air to breathe. People were screaming and there were many cries for help. Some of the older and weaker people began to die. Some people began to take off their clothes to get relief from the unbearable heat. My heart was breaking at this horrible scene. I felt that I couldn’t bear the torture any longer.” (16)