The ReichenbachFamily Archive

Halberstadt · Domplatz

12 באפריל 1942

ב-12 באפריל 1942 הורתה הלברשטאדט ל-102 יהודים להתייצב בדומפלאץ. ביניהם היו קורט רייכנבך, פאולה וולנברג ובנה של פאולה, הנס. ב-16 באפריל, בשש בבוקר, רשם אדם צ׳רניאקוב רכבת של הבאים מגרמניה שהגיעה לוורשה. אחרי אותו בוקר אין בארכיון הזה רשומה בשם של אף אחד משלושתם.

Last reviewed 27 August 2026.

The Stones of Remembrance beside Halberstadt Cathedral. The memorial names the Jews taken from the city, among them Kurt Reichenbach, Paula Wollenberg and Hans Wollenberg. It does not record what happened to them after Warsaw.

Photograph at #LastSeen · reuse restricted

People wait with luggage near the cathedral.

#LastSeen publishes a photograph of the Halberstadt departure, with Domplatz and the cathedral behind the group.

The atlas identifies several people, but not Kurt, Paula or Hans. Because the Beverstein family image is marked “all rights reserved,” it remains at #LastSeen.

See the departure photograph

Photograph at #LastSeen

Halberstadt, 12 April 1942

All rights reserved · linked at source

The names in the original sequence

Three relatives appear across two adjacent pages.

Page 14 records Kurt Reichenbach at entry 176. Page 15 records Hans Wollenberg at entry 198 and Paula Wollenberg at entry 199.

The pages are shown whole, so the three names remain among their neighbors and in the order of the list.

Page 14 of the April 1942 Magdeburg-Halberstadt deportation list containing Kurt Reichenbach at entry 176Deportation record · 2 תצוגותMagdeburg-Halberstadt transport listRead the adjacent pages with Kurt Reichenbach, Hans Wollenberg and Paula Wollenberg in their original sequence.See both pages

בחרו תצוגה לקבלת תמונה גדולה יותר, פרטי מקור ומידע ארכיוני.

Page 14 records Kurt Reichenbach at entry 176, with Dominikanerstraße 23 as his Halberstadt address. The list places Kurt on the transport to Warsaw. It gives no later fate.
Page 15 records Hans Wollenberg at entry 198 and Paula Wollenberg at entry 199, both at Westendorf 15. The list places mother and son on the transport to Warsaw. It gives no later fate for either of them.
Yad Vashem frame 2 records Kurt Reichenbach at Dominikanerstraße 23 and Paula and Hans Wollenberg together at Westendorf 15, corroborating their names, birth dates and forced addresses in the original transport evidence. The list corroborates their birth dates and forced addresses before Warsaw. It gives no later death date or place for any of the three.

Morning in the records

Two forced addresses, three names

Dominikanerstraße 23

Kurt Reichenbach

The transport list records Kurt at Dominikanerstraße 23. A parallel list preserved by Yad Vashem gives the same address.

Westendorf 15

Paula Wollenberg née Reichenbach and Hans Wollenberg

Paula was registered at Westendorf 15, the former Jewish school and community building converted after 1938 into forced collective housing for Jews.

Hans appears there with his mother. The transport evidence corrects his birth date to 3 June 1907 and gives Eisenach as his birthplace.

Documented route

The documented route ends in Warsaw.

Four dated records carry the names east. They do not describe every mile of the journey.

  1. 1

    12 April 1942

    Halberstadt

    102 Jews from Halberstadt were ordered to report at the registration office on Domplatz.

  2. 2

    13 April 1942

    Magdeburg

    They were taken to a collection camp with other deportees from the Magdeburg district.

  3. 3

    14 April 1942

    Berlin

    The train was coupled with transports from Berlin, Potsdam and the surrounding region.

    Whether the train was coupled at Moabit or at Grunewald is not settled in the surviving sources.

  4. 4

    16 April 1942

    Warsaw

    Czerniaków recorded the arrival of a train with newcomers from Germany at 6 in the morning.

Arrival evidence

One diary line records the arrival.

16 April 1942

“At 6 the train with newcomers from Germany arrived.”

Adam Czerniaków, chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, in his diary

The transport reconstruction cites this line for the day the Magdeburg-Halberstadt transport reached Warsaw. It is the nearest witness note to the arrival itself.

Read the source
Context photograph of Jews loading belongings onto trains at the Warsaw Umschlagplatz during the German occupation, dated by the source between 1942 and 1943. It is Warsaw context, not a photograph of the Halberstadt train or of Kurt, Paula or Hans.

Warsaw · 16 April 1942

The city named on the list.

The Halberstadt transport arrived there on 16 April 1942. This public-domain photograph shows railway cars, luggage and people being forced into transit at the Warsaw Umschlagplatz in later months.

It is context, not the Halberstadt train, and no Reichenbach relative is identified in it.

Warsaw context, later months

None of these voices identify Kurt, Paula or Hans. They describe the city into which the transport delivered them.

Historical context photograph of homeless children in the Warsaw ghetto, 1941. The photograph predates the Halberstadt transport and does not show Kurt Reichenbach, Paula Wollenberg or Hans Wollenberg.

Warsaw ghetto, remembered later

“We still think sometimes...sometime will get better.”

Abraham Lewent oral history, USHMM

Lewent remembered makeshift schools, libraries and the hunger for news inside the ghetto. His words give Warsaw a human interior without claiming that he saw the Halberstadt group.

Read the source

Summer 1942

“the truth was that they were being taken to Treblinka”

Vladka Meed oral history, USHMM

Meed described trying to reach her mother and brother at the Umschlagplatz. She also remembered the false promise of bread and marmalade before people were forced onto trains.

Read the source

Summer 1942

“This is the last time I saw them.”

Abraham Lewent oral history, USHMM

Lewent recalled hiding above a room while his mother and three sisters were taken away. It belongs here as a first-person account of deportation around Warsaw, not as a Reichenbach scene.

Read the source
Kurt Reichenbach among Halberstadt’s memorial names. Daniel photographed the name during the family’s return to Halberstadt. The stone marks Kurt’s removal from the city; it does not add a fate after Warsaw.

Memorial

The Domplatz memorial returns Kurt’s name to the city. It does not complete the record.

Kurt’s name is carved on Halberstadt’s Domplatz memorial. The stone names him without supplying an ending the evidence cannot support.

Paula and Hans remain in transport lists and memorial-book entries. For both, the surviving sources end with their arrival in Warsaw. No later fate is claimed here.

Yizkor · remembranceDomplatz memorial records

Sources and image use

Documents and context

The transport pages link to their source. The Warsaw photographs are public-domain context. The #LastSeen departure image remains at its source because reuse is restricted.