In August and September, 1944, nearly 13,000 Warsaw residents – men, women, and children – were arrested after the outbreak of the armed insurrection and deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp by way of a transit camp in Pruszków. They were imprisoned in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.

They included people from a variety of social classes and occupations (government officials, scholars, artists, physicians, merchants, and blue-collar workers), in varying physical condition (the injured, the sick, invalids, and pregnant women), and of various ages, from infants only a few weeks old to the elderly, aged 86 or more. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews living on “Aryan papers.”

The largest transports arrived in Auschwitz on August 12 and 13 – a total of almost 6,000 (approximately twice as many females as males, including over a thousand children and young people of both sexes).

The next transport of 3,087 men, women, and children arrived in Auschwitz from Pruszków on September 4. Almost 4,000 men and boys, and three women, arrived in two transports on September 13 and 17.

As part of the preliminary evacuation of Auschwitz, the majority of these people were transferred within several weeks or months to camps in Germany proper and assigned to labor in the armaments industry. Many of them died there.

In January 1945, at least 602 women and children, including children born in Auschwitz, were sent to camps in Berlin in five transports.

Some of the prisoners from these Warsaw transports remained in Auschwitz until the January, 1945 evacuation. Some died in the 'Death March' while others survived until liberation at camps in Germany proper. At least 298 men, women, and children prisoners from Warsaw were still in Auschwitz when it was liberated.

The Poles deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from the “Warsaw District” were commemorated in 2000 when the Museum published Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków z Warszawy do KL Auschwitz 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles from Warsaw to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1940-1944], which includes all the identities that historians have been able to establish for the Warsaw residents deported to the camp after the Uprising broke out. (...)

Deportations from Warsaw during the Uprising and afterwards

In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city’s residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121), a transit camp in Pruszków set up especially for this purpose. The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,000 to Auschwitz.