Using Auschwitz Prisoner Numbers to Correct Deportation Lists

Abstract

A list of the first Jews deported from Compiègne, France on 27 March 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau was never found. Similarly, there is no known arrival list for this convoy. All the 1112 men entered the camp, were assigned prisoner numbers, and were then tattooed. In 1978, Serge Klarsfeld created a list by assembling sub-lists from WWII and immediate post-war sources. Despite significant ongoing research by Klarsfeld and others, no definitive list was ever compiled. Material recorded and maintained by the Nazis (daily count book, death registers, entry cards) pertaining to this early period does exist. This paper demonstrates how systematic use of Auschwitz prisoner numbers combined with French censuses and metrical records enabled us to significantly revise our records of who was deported in this transport, by eliminating dozens of names, amending many more, and adding several others.

1. Introduction

Eighty years after the Holocaust, research and identification of all the Jewish victims has not yet been achieved. Yad Vashem—The World Holocaust Remembrance Center1 in Jerusalem, Israel—claims to have gathered around 4.8 million names2. If first-hand witnesses and survivors are ageing and dying, the release of sources to the public domain and the collapse of the Iron Curtain make a variety of online archival material accessible. This also applies in countries such as France, where the amount of war damage was relatively small but where the post-war authorities preferred not to expose blatant proof of the collaboration of the Vichy regime with the Nazis in the excluding legislation to which the Jews were submitted, the Aryanization of Jewish properties, and the round-ups performed by the French police and gendarmerie, until 1995 when the role of the French regime in the persecution of the Jews was finally acknowledged officially by President Jacques Chirac3.

The first transport of Jews from France took place on 27 March 1942 (Klarsfeld 2019, pp. 345–48), deporting men who were arrested in Paris in 1941 as early as May 14 in what is known as “La rafle du billet vert”, the green ticket roundup (Klarsfeld 2019, pp. 95–141), and August 20 (Klarsfeld 2019, pp. 183–99) and December 12 in what is known as “la rafle des notables”, the roundup of the notables (Klarsfeld 2019, pp. 288–89), who were then imprisoned in internment camps, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret department, Drancy near Paris, and Compiègne. The train from Compiègne reached Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killing center4 three days later, on March 30 (Czech 2021, p. 29). There is no evidence that the Anti-Jew section of the SicherheitDienst prepared a list of the men to be deported as was carried out in all subsequent transports. If there was one, it was never found. Similarly, there is no known arrival list in Auschwitz compiled by the camp administration, as can be found, for example, for Convoys 2 to 5 from France5.

In his pioneering 1978 Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France (Klarsfeld 1978, p. 25; 1983, pp. 41–56), Serge Klarsfeld explained how, in the absence of such a document, he carefully created a master list for this transport by combining several lists:

• Three lists of respectively 554, 764, and 285 names originating from the French Ministry of Veteran Affairs. The first list, which was handwritten, apparently extracted from the census registration of the Jews6, includes family names, given names, dates and places of birth. The second list, dated September 1946, includes names, given names, birthdates, birthplaces, Auschwitz-allocated prisoner numbers, and dates of death. The third list, from July 1949, similar to the second list, presents men who perished in Auschwitz between 1 and 18 April 1942.
• The names of 19 survivors7.
• A list of 565 men interned in Drancy, found in the Archives of the Ministry of Veteran Affairs, with names, birthplaces, birthdates, citizenship, addresses, and professions.
• Five smaller lists from the authorities of Drancy, dated 25 and 26 March 1942, including 58 war veterans considered fitting for work; 21 men from the Cherche-Midi Prison, from the Avenue Foch Gestapo headquarters or designated by Heinrichsohn8; 5 doctors and 30 volunteer male nurses; and an additional list of men to be deported.

Klarsfeld concluded:

“The total number of names obtained from these lists, eliminating any double counting, is 1189. Yet it seems, from other German documentation, that 1112 people were actually deported.”

He added:

“To these 1112 names must be added 34 Yugoslavian Jews imprisoned at Compiegne and claimed by Eichmann on March 18. A document from Dannecker9 attests to the deportation of those 34 Jews, confirming that they will form a separate group within the convoy (XXVb-18).”

Despite this conclusion, Klarsfeld’s 1978 list includes 1145 names. In the latest edition of his Memorial, after 34 years of additional research, Klarsfeld reduced this list to 1130 names, acknowledging the following:

“18 names among those indicated in our list would then be those of men who had not left.”

(Klarsfeld 2012, pp. 19–20)10

At the writing of this article (November 2023), Yad Vashem also indicates this convoy included 1112 men, but their nominal list includes 1220 distinct individuals11 while Le Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, the main French institution commemorating the Holocaust, lists 1152 men12.

As can be seen, historians have differences of opinions regarding the size and composition of this transport. However, all apparently include men who were not deported by this convoy.

While converting Klarsfeld’s memorial into digital form (Stroweis 2018) and thereafter expanding it, I focused on identifying the exact place of birth of all deportees (Stroweis 2021). On Convoy 1, about half of the men were born in Poland, a quarter were born in France, and the remaining quarter were from Turkey, Romania, Germany, the Soviet Union, and other European countries (Stroweis 2018; 2019, p. 30).

2. Results

Thanks to sources13 available online but either ignored or not taken into account, I present solid tools and criteria to reduce the uncertainties, to include or to exclude names to/from Klarsfeld’s list. The result is not yet a definitive list.

3. Materials and Methods

We first present the four major sources used for this study, then the basic methodology to compare them.

A general caveat with Holocaust-related archival sources is the difficulty in handling material that is highly inaccurate. Foreign Jewish and geographic names were (and still are) unfamiliar to French clerks. Transliteration of given names and surnames from non-Latin alphabets (Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic) or from foreign languages may produce many variations, even in metrical records. Therefore, this research is somehow similar to fuzzy logic14, where reasoning and conclusions are obtained despite some partially true pieces of evidence.

3.1. Memorial to the Jews Deported from France

The starting point is naturally Serge Klarsfeld’s Memorial to the Jews deported from France already mentioned above. It is mainly based on deportation lists. Klarsfeld found the copies of these lists15 that were given to UGIF, the General Union of French Israelites, a body created by the Vichy regime to represent the Jews of France. But, as mentioned earlier, there is no such list for Convoy 1.

3.2. The Auschwitz Calendar

What is the origin of the repeated statement that this convoy consisted of 1112 men?

Danuta Czech16, a late historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, worked for several years to reconstruct a day-by-day calendar of the major events which occurred in the camp, including transport arrivals, releases, public hangings, etc. This masterpiece work, known as the Auschwitz Chronicle or the Auschwitz Calendar, was first published in Polish between 1958 and 1964, then updated and translated into German (Czech 1989), English (Czech 1990), and Italian (Czech 2002). I used the Italian version, which is available online (Czech 2021). The Calendar entry for 30 March 1942 reads as follows:

“1112 Jews, arrived with a RSHA17 transport from the camp of Compiègne, France, and were assigned prisoner numbers 27533 to 28644. They come from different European countries and were arrested in Paris on 14 May, 20 August and 12 December 1941. Some were held prisoner in the Drancy camp, the others at Compiègne.

This is the first mass transportation of Jews from France arriving to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. They have not yet been subjected to any selection.”

(Czech 2021, p. 29)

In his 1945 testimony (Fajnzylberg 1945; 2005, pp. 219–38), Alter Fajnzylberg, a survivor from this convoy (also known as Stanisłav Jankowski) said:

“There were 1118 men, only Jews in the transport. […] When we arrived [at Auschwitz] several among us were missing because, during the transport many had died due to the harsh conditions. […] After five weeks in Birkenau, the prisoner number 27675 was tattooed on my breast18.”

The number 1112 is the assumed number of live prisoners who entered the camp; therefore, the number of men departing France should have been slightly higher. Beyond casualties during transport, three men are known to have escaped from the train while still in France near Soissons: Aisne: Roger Messaoud Abouab19, Sadia Gaston Surfati20, and Georges André Rueff21. Fajnzylberg’s count of 1118 Jews leaving Compiègne is therefore indeed plausible.

If Fajnzylberg’s memory that inmates were tattooed five weeks after arrival is accurate, then some of them may have been murdered before being assigned a prisoner number.

From subsequent transports from France, we know that individuals selected to enter the camp were assigned successive prisoner numbers according to the alphabetical order of their surname. Men and women received prisoner numbers from separate series22. The alphabetic order was not always strictly followed, due to spelling variants in their registered surnames, or because specific ranges of numbers were used according to the sub-camps or kommandos the prisoners were sent to. A pseudo-alphabetic order was usually enforced within such sub-groups according to the surname first initial, e.g., all surnames starting with the letter B after all surnames starting with A. Still, the prisoner numbers, when available, may occasionally give us some clues to who was gassed upon arrival and who may have been admitted to the camp, when taking into account the newcomers’ ages. Unfortunately, no verification can be carried out for this first transport where prisoner numbers were assigned regardless of inmate surnames.

3.3. Auschwitz Prisoners Database

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum maintains an online database of the prisoners (named here as APD, for Auschwitz-Birkenau Prisoners Database) who were admitted to the camp23. Its scope is partial, and currently includes 265,706 individual records from 445,163 source items for Polish civilians and criminals, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, Sinti, and Jews. A typical entry includes the surname and given name of the prisoner, and sometimes place of birth, date of birth, prisoner number, fate, and date of death; rarely is a profession or photo included. The source of this information is always mentioned, e.g., arrival list (Zugangsliste), entry registration (Personalbogen), daily count book, including transfers and deaths (Stärkebuch), death book (Sterbebücher), hospital registration (Krankenbau), etc.

The search form of this database has one single field where you can enter one or more parts of a given name, a surname, or a birthplace. I discovered by chance that it is possible to search the database according to a prisoner number by entering even just a few consecutive digits. For example, a search for “276” yields the records for all inmates whose prisoner number contains that string, among them Pinkus Abramovici, a Jew born on 30 January 1895 and whose prisoner number 27610 appears in the Stärkebuch24, and Jakub Biedrzycki, a Polish shoemaker from Sochaczew whose name and prisoner number 12760 appears on an arrival list25 from 6 April 1941. While it is a lengthy process, this allows comprehensive research by prisoner numbers.

3.4. List of Deportees Published in the French Journal Officiel

The French Office National des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre (National Office for Veteran Affairs and War Victims, known as ONACVG) is responsible for granting the status of “Mort en Déportation”—died in deportation—to deportees from France who did not survive. These posthumous recognitions, based on archival material collected by the Service Historique de la Défense26 (SHD), have been granted since 1985 to about 80,000 victims of deportations from France, either due to repression (i.e., political opponents, underground resistance movements, or hostages) or to persecution (i.e., as Jews27). The legal decrees have been published in the Journal Officiel de la République Française (Official Journal of the French Republic), the government gazette of the French Republic, which is available and searchable online28. This covers approximately two third of the victims29 and half of the deportees30. A typical mention includes the victim’s name, given name, maiden name, place and date of birth, and place and date of death, but not the convoy number. When the exact date of death is unknown, it is set, by convention, as five days after the departure of the convoy from France. I spotted the names of 991 men from Convoy 1 in the various decrees.

3.5. Method and First Results

Significant material pertaining to the male Auschwitz inmates from the first five transports from France has survived, and was embedded in the database. I therefore collected one by one the prisoner numbers for the deportees from Convoy 1 in the list established by Serge Klarsfeld. In parallel, I checked the records for prisoners whose prisoner number is in the 27533–28644 range. For both queries, I searched the Auschwitz Memorial database, once by prisoner name, once by prisoner number. I then compared the findings. When comparing two lists, three situations may occur: items may be found in both lists, items may only appear in the first list, or items may appear only in the second list. I also verified that two prisoners do not share the same number. I then also looked up the lists published in the Journal Officiel.

The first prisoner number for a man of Convoy 1 is 27533, as mentioned in the Auschwitz Calendar. It was attributed to Jakob Lesselbaum31 born in Warsaw on 8 January 1899. The last prisoner number for Convoy 1, 28644, was given to Kopel Fingerhut32 born in Warsaw on 22 March 1905.

Among the 1112 numbers from 27533 to 28644, using the Auschwitz Prisoners Database or, in three cases, thanks to survivor testimonies, I was able to re-assign their prisoner number to 1064 men from Klarsfeld’s list, confirming their presence in this convoy. This left 48 prisoner numbers in this range unassigned. Seven additional men on Klarsfeld’s list are known as prisoners in the database but without known prisoner numbers. On the other hand, 46 men from Klarsfeld’s list were not found in the Prisoners Database.

3.6. Men Not Arrived by Convoy 1 from France

Some 15 additional men in Klarsfeld’s list were also found in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database, but their prisoner numbers were outside the 27533–28644 range indicated by the Auschwitz Calendar. I first assumed that these were errors in the numbers provided by the database due to poorly readable sources or indexing errors, as such situations occur elsewhere. I then noticed that, for most of them, Serge Klarsfeld was not able to retrieve their last address in France. A deeper examination became necessary.

3.6.1. Case 1: Emanuel Spiegler

Emanuel Spiegler’s name appears on Klarsfeld’s list for Convoy 1, as well as on the memorial wall at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris33. According to Klarsfeld, he was born in Bardejov, Slovakia on 15 December 1896; his last address in France is unknown.

Pawel Spiegler, maybe a relative, was also born in Bardejov, on 8 October 1899. He lived at 40, Rue Philippe de Girard, Paris 18 with his wife Elisabeth née Weisz. Both were deported to Auschwitz: Pawel34 by Convoy 4 on 25 June 1942 and Elisabeth35 by Convoy 38 on 28 September 1942. None of them survived.

From the Auschwitz Prisoners Database, we learn that Emanuel Spiegler was murdered on 20 May 194236. He was assigned the prisoner number 32064, far beyond the expected range. Checking who were the men with such a prisoner number according to Danuta Czech’s Calendar, I found that, on 23 April 1942, from a transport of 1000 Jews from Slovakia, 543 men were given prisoner numbers 31942 to 32484, while 457 women received prisoner numbers 5769 to 6225 (Czech 2021, p. 35). Therefore, Emanuel’s birthplace, prisoner number, and lack of a Parisian address, all concur to conclude that he was deported from Slovakia and not from France as formerly assumed.

On the other hand, the Auschwitz Prisoners Database teaches that Pawel Spiegler was assigned prisoner number 4254637, which is indeed within the range of numbers assigned to the men of Convoy 4 from France, 41773 to 42772. There is no record for his spouse in this database.

3.6.2. Case 2: Mozes Abram Beidner

Mozes Abram Beidner’s name appears on Klarsfeld’s list for Convoy 1, as well as on the memorial wall at the Mémorial de la Shoah38. According to Klarsfeld, Beidner was born on 13 October 1920 in Brzesko (a town approximately 50 km—31 miles—west of Kraków) and he lived in Paris (street address not known). The Auschwitz Prisoners Database confirms his name, birthplace, and birthdate, and yields the following additional details: his prisoner number was 28746 (outside Convoy 1 range), his date of arrival to the camp was 2 April 1942 (i.e., three days after Convoy 1 arrived), his mug shots reveal he wears a Magen David star patch as Jew39 with no nationality, and his recorded profession was “worker”. Indeed, the Auschwitz Calendar relevant entry on April 2 reads as follows: “30 prisoners, interned by Sipo and SD from Krakow, receive the numbers 28739 to 28768. (Czech 2021, pp. 30–31)” All this leads to the conclusion that Beidner too was not deported from France.

3.6.3. Summary of Men Not Arrived by Convoy 1 from France

We reached similar conclusions regarding 15 men formerly considered to have been deported in Convoy 1 from France.

Table 1. Deportees with prisoner numbers outside expected range.

Prisoner No.	Name	Birthdate	Birthplace	Arrival	Arrived from
27524	Salomon Samuel40	9 February 1913	Lesko, Pol.	Mar. 30, 1942	SIPO Kraków, Pol.
27533	Lesselbaum Jacob	8 January 1899	Warszawa, Pol.	Mar. 30, 1942	RSHA Compiègne, Fr.
28644	Fingerhut Kopel	22 March 1905	Warszawa, Pol.	Mar. 30, 1942	RSHA Compiègne, Fr.
28646	Kolaric Brano41	29 December 1920	unknown	Apr. 01, 1942	Unknown
28650	Knoz Martin42	11 November 1922	unknown	Apr. 01, 1942	Unknown
28680	Freidl Richard43	18 December 1913	Unterkanitz now Dolní Kounice, Czech Rep.	Apr. 01, 1942	Brno, Czech Rep.
28746	Beidner Mozes	13 October 1920	Brzesko, Pol.	Apr. 02, 1942	SIPO Kraków, Pol.
28771	Knaster Israel44	31 December 1924	Warszawa, Pol.	Apr. 02, 1942	Oppeln/Opole, Pol.
28789	Rosenberg Isidor45	1 March 1910	Kraków, Pol.	Apr. 03, 1942	SIPO Kraków, Pol.
28792	Brauner Heinrich46	12 December 1905	Mosciska, Pol./Mostyska, Ukr.	Apr. 03, 1942	SIPO Kraków, Pol.
28795	Kleinmuntz Hermann47	18 April 1914	Kraków, Pol.	Apr. 03, 1942	SIPO Kraków, Pol.
28900	Hammer Heinrich48	7 July 1907	Rogowo, Pol.	Apr. 11, 1942	Katowice, Pol.
28906	Schmitt Leo49	29 September 1906	Holíč, Slovakia	Apr. 13, 1942	RSHA Slovakia
28990	Markovic Abraham50	1 December 1904	Seľce, Czechosl. now Siltse, Ukr.	Apr. 13, 1942	RSHA Slovakia
29300	Sonnschein Heinrich51	10 December 1922	unknown	Apr. 13, 1942	RSHA Slovakia
32064	Spiegler Emanuel	15 December 1896	Bardejov, Slov.	Apr. 23, 1942	RSHA Slovakia
39176	Tenczer Czyla52	18 March 1900	Klimontów, Pol.	Jun. 7, 1942	RSHA Compiègne, Fr.

lists their name, birthdate, birthplace, prisoner number, arrival date at the camp, and the place of origin of their transports as deduced from their prisoner number according to the Auschwitz Calendar. In most cases, their birthplace is located in the proximity of the origin of the transport that brought them to the camp. The table is sorted by ascending prisoner numbers. It also includes, for convenience, the two prisoners from Convoy 1 from France with the lowest and highest prisoner numbers, Jakob Lesselbaum and Kopel Fingerhut.

There is no doubt left: none of these men was deported by Convoy 1. The sub-lists used to reconstruct Klarsfeld’s list for this convoy included the names of prisoners—Jews and non-Jews—who were sent to Auschwitz from other countries.

The case of Czyla Tenczer is slightly different. He was indeed deported from France, aboard Convoy 2 (which left Compiègne on 5 June 1942 and reached Auschwitz on June 7) as his prisoner number 39176 corroborates53, and not on Convoy 1 as formerly thought.

Brano Kolaric was assigned prisoner number 28646, just two numbers above the highest prisoner number for Convoy 1. His given name Brano, or Braňo, is of Serbian or Croatian origin54, while his surname written as Kolarić or Kolarič is either from Slovenia or Croatia55. Both suggest a Yugoslavian origin. Could he perhaps be one of the 34 Yugoslavian men abovementioned by Klarsfeld? The Auschwitz Calendar does not indicate the origin of the transport reported as arrived on April 1st and whose 15 inmates were assigned prisoner numbers 28646 to 28680, but Joseph Kolaric (number 28647), Franz Kerencic (number 28648), Franz Knez (number 28649), and Martin Knoz (number 28650), all have Slovenian, Croatian, or Montenegrin surnames supporting this hypothesis; however, subsequent numbers were given to men of Polish and Czech origin. In any case, we have not found pre-war traces of Brano Kolaric’s existence in the genealogical sources from France.

3.7. Men with Prisoner Numbers in Target Range Not Formerly Identified

The systematic scan of the Auschwitz Prisoners Database for numbers in the 27533–28644 range also revealed the names of six men not found in Klarsfeld’s list, see

Table 2. Men with prisoner numbers in 27533–28644 range not formerly identified.

Prisoner No.	Name	Birthdate	Birthplace
27906	Kostoveski Avraham56	2 April 1908	Odessa, Ukraine
28387	Dinner Pinchos57	10 May 1911	Shpikov/Shpykiv, Ukraine
28468	Prilutzky Boris58	9 August 1898	Bendery, Moldova
28502	Diner Shlioma59	10 March 1900	Kishinev/Chișinău, Moldava
28581	Rozeszweig, Mendel60	22 March 1899
28642	Slupinski Anton61	10 August 1908	Danzig/Gdańsk, Poland

.

In order to definitely assert that they were part of Convoy 1, we searched for signs of their presence in France in 1942 or earlier, using traditional genealogy sources (e.g., civil records, population censuses, and naturalization records) to confirm or deny whether these men lived in France before their deportation. Below we examine each case.

3.7.1. Case 3: Avraham Kostoveski

Avraham Kostoveski became a French citizen in 1925. His naturalization on 10 April 1925 under the spelling Avraham Kostovetzki was published as part of a decree published in the French Journal Officiel62. This was early enough to be considered a French citizen even once the 22 July 1940 denaturalization legislation was passed by the Vichy regime, when all naturalizations obtained after 1927 were reexamined and often nullified (Zalc 2016). Avraham Kostovetzki was part of Convoy 1.

3.7.2. Case 4: Pinkas Dinner

Pinkas Dinner’s name can be found on the 1936 population census63 at 6 Boulevard Rochechouart, Paris 18, so he was part of Convoy 1 too.

3.7.3. Case 5: Boris Prilutzky

In 1949, following a tribunal judgment64, a death record65 was registered for deportee Boris Prilutzky citing his Parisian address at 10, Rue Eugène Labiche, Paris 16 and the name of his spouse Elsbeth Franziska Lucia née Leipziger. The act declares that Prilutzky died in Compiègne on 27 March 1942, i.e., the place and date of the departure of Convoy 1. A handwritten amendment posted in the margin of the death record, fifty years later on November 1999, states that the record was rectified by the Ministry in charge of the Veteran Affairs to indicate that Prilutzky received the honorific mention “Died in deportation” and that he died in Auschwitz on 1st April 1942 instead of Compiègne on 27 March 1942. The new place and date of death are not supported by any evidence. They are set, by convention, at the destination of the transport and five days after the train left France. Thus, there is no doubt that Prilutzky resided in France and was deported to Auschwitz by Convoy 1.

3.7.4. Case 6: Shlioma Diner

Shlioma was a chemical engineer, married with one child, as can be found in the Paris 1936 census66, confirming he was part of Convoy 1. His address was in the 12th arrondissement, at 3 Place Daumesnil, today known as Place Félix Eboué67.

3.7.5. Case 7: Mendel Rozeszweig

The surname Rozeszweig is probably misspelled and a distortion of Rozencwajg (Polish spelling), Rosenzweig (German spelling), or a hybrid combination. As no record has been found for this man, according to any spelling, we cannot reach any conclusion about his itinerary.

3.7.6. Case 8: Anton Slupinski

This study would not be complete without mentioning an enigma, the unexpected case of Anton Slupinski, prisoner number 28642, born in Danzig, today Gdańsk, in Poland. His name does not appear on Klarsfeld’s list. His prisoner number is within the 27533–28644 range, but he was probably not deported from France.

There are two records in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database for this man: The first record, based on a finding at Auschwitz I Block 4, includes his prisoner number and a photo. The second record68, from the death books, has no prisoner number. Both records mention his name, his birthdate, his birthplace in Danzig, and his date of death as 7 September 1942. Most likely, the museum archivists deliberately chose not to merge the two records as the birthdates differ, to avoid possible confusion between two distinct homonyms. My guess is that the two records refer to the same man, as the difference in birthdates (10/08/1908 in mm/dd/yyyy vs. 18/10/1908 in dd/mm/yyyy format) could be due to a recording error in registration.

In any event, in the black and white mug shot photo, Slupinski is presented as a Pole, and his triangle badge does not seem to classify him as a Jew. In addition, the name Slupinski is not listed in the dictionaries of Jewish surnames (Beider 1996, 2004, 2008; Menk 2005) or found in major Jewish genealogy databases such as JewishGen69 and Jewish Records Indexing—Poland70. Even if Slupinski was a false identity name, his presence in Convoy 1 would have caused Nazis to identify him as a Jew for the photo. Finally, we found no trace of an Anton Slupinski in the genealogical sources from France. It is unlikely that there was any confusion with his prisoner number, as the number is clearly shown on his photo. Our conclusion is that he was not deported from France, despite his prisoner number.

Slupinski’s prisoner number 28642 is the penultimate in the 27533–28644 range. It is possible that the registration of the last prisoner from the Convoy 1 from France, Kopel Fingerhut, prisoner number 28644, was delayed, and therefore took place after the registration of Slupinski, causing a minor misunderstanding not detected by the Auschwitz Calendar.

3.8. Findings from the French Journal Officiel

As mentioned above, in the Journal Officiel, deportees without a known date of death were declared dead five days after the departure of their convoy from France. For such men from Convoy 1, the registered date is therefore 1 April 1942. While searching the Journal Officiel lists for men who died in Auschwitz on that very date, I encountered two names not included in Klarsfeld’s list: Gaston Perles and Nicolas Adalbert Schwarz.

3.8.1. Case 9: Gaston Perles

According to the Journal Officiel71, Gaston Perles was born in Paris 16 on 10 November 1888 and he officially died in Auschwitz on 1 April 1942. Auschwitz Prisoners Database also has a record72 for Gaston Perles, with the same place and date of birth, without prisoner number, and indicating he was murdered on 4 April 1942, as found in the death books—that is, eight days after his departure from Compiègne and five days after he arrived. Despite the absence of his prisoner number, there is no doubt he was deported in Convoy 1, as no Jews from France arrived at Auschwitz before Convoy 1. Perhaps he died before being tattooed, which would explain why his prisoner number is not recorded on the death books. This also explains why he did not appear on our search according to prisoner number on the Convoy 1 range.

3.8.2. Case 10: Nicolas Adalbert Schwarz

According to the Journal Officiel73, Nicolas Adalbert Schwarz was born in Antwerp, Belgium on 27 January 1899 and he officially died in Auschwitz on 1 April 1942. The Auschwitz Prisoners Database has no record for him. A 1921 population census shows him living at 26 Rue de la Paix in Bois-Colombes, a suburb of Paris, with his wife Frederika née Spitzer and their two children born in France in 1921 and 1924. All four were Dutch citizens. He was an employee of the Polak and Schwartz office in Bois-Colombes. Polak and Schwartz was a Dutch enterprise from Zutphen, Netherlands, involved in concentrated fruit juices74. Nicolas Adalbert’s parents came from this same town, so he was probably the family representative for the company in France. He too should be considered as deportee by Convoy 1.

3.9. Further Clean-Up

Despite Klarsfeld’s extreme care to avoid including the same person in his 1978 and 2012 lists, some cases of men listed twice remained undetected until recently. This is due to severe distortions in the spelling of names, mismatch of birthplace and birthdate, and/or lack of an address in France. To help with this verification, we systematically looked up all surnames on Klarsfeld’s list and compared them to the names found in established dictionaries of Jewish surnames of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi origins75, including their spelling variants. This revealed very improbable names. Here are a few examples where the second surnames are the correct ones:

• Chaim Arozonas vs. Chaim Akotonas,
• Pinkus Druker vs. Pinkas Dinner,
• Gilbert Foussir vs. Albert Souffir,
• Joseph Ludym vs. Joseph Fudym,
• Leib Gartelman vs. Leib Guitelman,
• Israel Harltov vs. Israel Mazaltov,
• Gutko Landman vs. Judka Langman,
• Léon Latman vs. Léon Altmann,
• Wolf Lewek vs. Lewek Wolf,
• Max Lichtmann vs. Mejlech Littmann,
• Abram Prinzewski vs. Abram Pinczewski.

Klarsfeld’s list also includes the names of two men about whom there is no evidence of their presence in France; there is no trace in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database, no mention in the Journal Officiel, and no known place of birth: Stroul Gryn (born 1890) and Leb Krasnava (born 1905). We assume that there are no good reasons to keep them.

3.10. Deportees Who Died during the Transport

Could we possibly find out how many deportees died before arriving at Auschwitz, and identify their names? Unfortunately, I am not aware of any survivor testimony that could shed a light on this question. We may never have a definite answer. But this research makes it possible to narrow down the list of ‘candidates’ among the men who left Compiègne by ruling out the escapees, the survivors, and those listed in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database, a proof that they entered the camp: only 33 men remain. It is possible to further reduce this number to 21 men by filtering out all those whose death occurred after 1st April 1942, in particular according to the information published in the Journal Officiel. Two examples appear below.

3.10.1. Case 11: Hersz Josef Sluszny

Hersz Josef Sluszny, born in Siedlce, Poland in 1901, appears on Klarsfeld’s list but not in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database. His last known address was 117, boulevard Voltaire, Paris 11. According to a 2003 decree published in the French Journal Officiel, he was murdered on 6 May 1943 in Auschwitz76, that is, after a long stay in the camp.

3.10.2. Case 12: Abram Fuks

Abram Fuks, born in Dobra, Poland in 1896, lived in France before the war; his name appears on Klarsfeld’s list for Convoy 1, but not in the Auschwitz Prisoners Database. However, his transfers from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen and then to Flossenbürg—two concentration camps—have been documented77, so we know that he did not perish on the way to Auschwitz.

4. Conclusions

We have correlated several sources to better assess the list of the deportees from Convoy 1. We modified Klarsfeld’s original list by adding and removing names, based on solid observations.

At this stage, our list now holds 1116 names of men who left Compiègne. It does not include the names of Mendel Rozeszweig, Stroul Gryn, or Leb Krasnava whose fate is uncertain as discussed above.

Our conclusions are as follows: three men escaped from the train, so 1113 arrived at Auschwitz; an unknown number of them perished during the transport; at least 1097 men entered the camp; for 1064 among them, their prisoner number is known; a maximum of 1111 of these men were assigned prisoner numbers between 27533 and 28644 (not 1112 due to the case of Anton Slupinski); 32 survived the deportation. These numbers are very close to what the survivor Alter Fajnzylberg declared.

The resulting list can be directly consulted at the online Memorial to the Jews deported from France at: https://stevemorse.org/france/see.php?ConvoyconvoiKind=exact&ConvoyconvoiMax=1 (accessed on 26 February 2024).

We have significantly modified the list of the men deported by Convoi 1. As can be seen from this study, the devil is in the details. Further research based on new evidence and offline sources (e.g., Archives from the French Ministry of Defense) may shed light on a few cases, and cause minor changes.

I have also made use of the Auschwitz Prisoners Database for other transports coming from France; the records often helped to identify the places of birth of the deportees, and the prisoner numbers served to deduct the convoy numbers and avoid confusion between homonym deportees.

Finally, two additional remarks:

• Ironically, we took advantage of the Nazi dehumanization policy of substituting the names of their prisoners with numbers, in order to restore some historical facts about these men.
• I would like to highlight that the removal of some 20 names from the French deportation list does not mean these men were not deported to Auschwitz; they definitely were! We simply conclude they were not sent from France, that they arrived at the camp from other places such as Poland, the Netherlands, and Slovakia by transports that took place at the same period.