The Kladovo Transport was, according to the British government, an "illegal" Jewish refugee transport of 822 Jewish refugees (whose numbers subsequently grew to about 1,100), which started in Vienna on 25 November 1939. Its aim was to flee from the Nazis by travelling down the Danube River on a journey that would hopefully take them to Eretz Israel (i.e., the Land of Israel which at that time was called British Mandatory Palestine). The refugees overwintered in the Yugoslav river-port of Kladovo because of an early freeze-up of the Danube. As 1940 progressed, they waited in vain for a sea-going vessel to continue their journey via the Black Sea. In September 1940, they were forcibly moved by the Yugoslav government to the port of Šabac on the Sava River, where they were subsequently caught by the Nazis in April 1941 and imprisoned in the Šabac concentration camp. Only about 200 young people and a few adults were able to be saved or escape on their own. In October 1941, the men of the transport were transported ~40 km to a farmer's field near the village of Zasavica and shot on 12 and 13 October by units of the Wehrmacht on the orders of General Franz Böhme. In late January 1942, the women and children were transferred to the Sajmište concentration camp, where they were subsequently murdered between 19 March and 10 May 1942 in a gas van, by order of the camp commander Herbert Andorfer.
Background In 1917, the Balfour Declaration by the British government supported establishing a Jewish homeland in British Mandatory Palestine and promised the possibility of legal immigration (Aliyah). However, immigration became limited, starting in the 1920s, by the British introduction of a Jewish immigration quota system. Only those Jews who managed to get British immigration certificates were allowed to legally immigrate. In the 1930s, Zionist organizations responded with the implementation of clandestine (i.e., "illegal" according to the British authorities) transports (Aliya Bet). At the turn of 1938/1939, the Haganah in British Mandatory Palestine established the Mossad LeAliyah Bet organization which planned and implemented the clandestine transports. Between the March 1938 Anschluss, i.e., the annexation of Austria to the German Reich and the beginning of the Second World War, ~17,000 people in 50 clandestine transports left Europe.Gabriele Anderl, Walter Manoschek: Gescheiterte Flucht. Der jüdische "Kladovo-Transport" auf dem Weg nach Palästina 1939–42. Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Wien 1993, , S. 17–21 (Abschnitt Hintergrund), 18 (Zitat Weingarten); 22–23, 49 (Organisation); 48–57 (Von Wien nach Bratislava); 61–62 (Zitat und Schilderungen Jacobs); 57–101 (Die Zeit in Kladovo); 145–173 (Verlegung nach Šabac), 174–178 + 290 (Darien II und Hintergründe), 178 (Zitat Spitzer an Klüger); 183 (Zitat Nachheiser); 184–188 (Zertifikate), 189–199 (Flucht Herta Reich & Co), 199–201 (Frieda Fanny Wiener); 202–211 (Nach der Zerschlagung Jugoslawiens); 201–224(Partisanenaufstände und deren Folgen), 215 (Zitat Danckelmann); 224–229 (Die Erschießung der Männer des Kladovo-Transportes), 226 (Zitate Böhme und Anna Hecht), 228 (Zitat Jelsić); 234–240 (Frauen und Kinder im KZ Sajmište), 236 (Zitat Krankenhausbediensteter), 235 (Zitat Helm); 240–250 (Ermordung im Gaswagen) 248 (Zitat Enge); 250–253 (Aufarbeitung); 250 (Juristische Verfolgung).
With the annexation of Austria by the German Reich in March 1938, the Nuremberg Laws were adopted overnight. The aggressive policy of expulsion by the Nazis allowed Jews to emigrate to a foreign refuge. Although Austrian Jews were largely assimilated, they supported Jewish emigration financially and morally, without thinking of their own emigration. The Viennese branch of the Zionist organization Hechaluz, which had existed since the 1920s, actively helped Eastern European Jews passing through Austria on their journey to British Mandatory Palestine.Gabriele Anderl: Generationenkonflikte. Die zionistische Auswanderung aus Österreich nach Palästina in der Zwischenkriegszeit. In: Frank Stern, Barbara Eichinger (Hrsg.): Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900–1938. Akkulturation – Antisemitismus – Zionismus. Böhlau Verlag, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2009, , S. 79, 81.
In July 1938, Ralph Weingarten attended the international Évian Conference for Jewish refugees wishing to flee from Nazi Germany and afterward described his impression of the proceedings:
In May 1939, the British government published the "White Paper of 1939" which specified that immigration of Jews into British Mandatory Palestine for the next five years would be limited to 75,000. Other countries also limited the immigration of Jews drastically.
It became increasingly difficult for Jews to escape the threat of the Nazis, as the Nazi sphere of influence grew. Clandestine ("illegal") immigration to Palestine became more and more important, as the organization of transports had been hampered by the outbreak of war. An additional complication was that the British government considered Jewish refugees from hostile (primarily German) areas to be "enemy aliens".
In the fall of 1939, Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust and founder of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, put pressure on Georg Überall, Secretary General of the Austrian Hechaluz (a Zionist youth movement). Eichmann threatened that all Hechaluz members who had not yet emigrated (there were hundreds waiting in the Hachshara camps outside Vienna for their departure) with deportation to Poland if they did not leave the country. In addition, he ordered the creation of the "Committee for Jewish Overseas Transport" and appointed as its head. Although Storfer was a Jew, he was not a Zionist, and in 1939, with support from the SS (Schutzstaffel, a major Nazi paramilitary organization), he became increasingly influential in the organization of, according to the British government, "illegal" transport. The Hechalutz representatives saw him as a collaborator of the Nazis and avoided contact, thereby ultimately leading to failure of the project.
Organization of transport In the face of threats by Eichmann, Überall decided to dissolve the Hechaluz centers as soon as possible and to send its members out of the country. The plan was to travel by ship down the Danube River to Sulina (Romania), near the river's mouth on the Black Sea, and then transfer to a larger ship that would take them to British Mandatory Palestine. The Mossad LeAliyah Bet agent Moshe Agami gave his assent to the planned transport. Ferdinand Ceipek, a former National Socialist, supported the Jewish rescue attempts and helped obtain 800 regular entry visas to Slovakia. In spite of intensive efforts in Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria by Mossad LeAliyah Bet agents who were stationed in these countries, no passenger ship could be easily obtained to pick up the refugees who would arrive at Sulina.
For the first time, an "illegal" transport was also allocated to groups of the Youth Aliya (Aliyat HaNo'ar), a Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich. This decision was very controversial; the director of the Vienna Youth Aliyah, , defended the decision. In a letter to a friend that he wrote shortly after the departure of the Vienna group, he stated that there was no other way, that the risk had been assessed, and it was too good to pass up. The entire group (totaling 822 refugees) to be transported was approximately one third children and adolescents up to the age of 17, of which half were accompanied by their parents, and the rest in the care of Zionist youth associations. Another third were the 18-to-35-year-old members of the Hechaluz. The remainder was made up of veteran Zionists, who had previously been waiting in vain for British entry certificates because of their age, as well as couples, and individual Jews who were still able to pay a significant amount for the trip despite the political circumstances. Equally mixed were the participants with regard to their social origins; they represented the entire spectrum of the Jews of Central Europe, and their religiosity also ranged from Orthodox to moderately traditional to atheistic.
Journey On 25 November 1939, the 822 Austrians selected for transport to British Mandatory Palestine were brought by train from Vienna to Bratislava. They could bring only a backpack with personal belongings, which could not exceed more than eight kilos, and ten Reichsmark in foreign exchange (according to the Nazi "emigration tax" policy).
Arriving in Bratislava, they were interned in the abandoned munitions factory ("Patronka") and a former bachelor quarters ("Slobodrna") and guarded by members of the Slovak fascist Hlinka Guard. They received provisions from the local Jewish community. The group grew with the addition of 130 refugees from Berlin, 50 from Danzig and about 100 from Prague and Bratislava. While the Danube had already threatened to freeze over, they stayed in their quarters while waiting to find out about a connection for the onward journey. The Slovak authorities presented an ultimatum in which the group would be returned to the German border if they did not leave soon. After about ten days, they were brought to the port in buses and were able to board the Danube Steamship Shipping Company (DDSG) river steamship called the Uranus, flying the swastika flag. In the next few hours after the first lunch, all of the refugees had severe diarrhea, which led to the speculation that they had been poisoned.
The Uranus with its ~1,100 Jewish refugees embarked on its journey down the Danube River on 8 December. The ship proceeded only as far as Gyor, Hungary where the transport was stopped by the ship-owners and returned to Bratislava because the ship-owners refused to allow their steamship to continue onward when they discovered that there was no ship waiting (as had been previously promised) at Sulina; the ship-owners feared that the passengers would refuse to disembark in Sulina and their steamship would therefore become unavailable for other planned trips. It took two days to persuade the ship-owners to allow the Uranus to continue on its journey. They finally agreed when they were assured that the Uranus would need to sail just past the point where the Danube River entered Yugoslavia where the refugees would transfer to three Yugoslav riverboats.
The second departure from Bratislava took place on 13 December. The passengers were then transferred mid-river near Bezdan to three small Yugoslav riverboats named the "Car Nikola II" (i.e., Czar or Emperor Nicholas II), "Car Dušan" (i.e., Czar or Emperor Dušan), and "Kraljica Marija" (i.e., Queen Maria). These were chartered at premium rates on behalf of Mossad agent Moshe Agami by the "Association of Jewish Communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia." Via the three riverboats, the refugees sailed to Prahovo, where they were moored from 18 to 30 December because they were denied passage past the Yugoslav border with Romania.