Rare Archival Film Depicting Nazi Rail Deportations During World War II
About This Footage
This rare 1943 motion-picture record documents the forced deportation of Jews and Sinti (Roma) to Auschwitz-Birkenau, filmed in Nazi-occupied Europe. German soldiers supervise as civilians—men, women, and children—are loaded into sealed cattle cars for transport to the extermination complex. Among them is the young Sinti girl Settela Steinbach, whose haunting glance from a railcar window has become one of the Holocaust’s most enduring images. The footage reveals both the human anguish and the systematic precision of Nazi deportation operations, providing irreplaceable historical evidence of how the Holocaust unfolded at the logistical level. Preserved and digitized from original film elements, it offers scholars, filmmakers, and educators authentic visual documentation suitable for editorial and historical productions.
This 1943 deportation film remains among the most powerful and recognizable images of the Holocaust. Its preservation ensures that the victims’ stories endure as more than statistics — as human lives captured in motion at the threshold of tragedy.