Here are two attachments showing routes of previous female Hungarian prisoners who came via Beendorf and Hamburg to Sweden at the end of the war. Their way to Germany, through various satellite camps and finally to Beendorf. One attachment shows groups and a second shows detention routes of individuals.
According to the so-called Passagerarlistor (registration at arrival) from the city archives of Malmö, 903 Hungarian women arrived in Sweden during the evacuation from Ravensbrück and Hamburg. Only one of them came directly from Ravensbrück. The breakdown is based on the arrival dates from 27 April to 2 May for Ravensbrück and 3 and 4 May 1945 for Hamburg. The evacuation from Ravensbrück to Sweden benefitted almost exclusively Western and Northern European and Polish women. Of the approximately 7000 women from Ravensbrück, only about 50 were of other nationalities. On the transport from Hamburg only women from the Soviet Union were excluded.
Hungary at that time had fluid borders and so the Neuengamme Memorial includes Romanians and a few other nationalities in the counting of Hungarians. Unlike the evacuation of Hungarian women from Neuengamme camps who were not sent to Sweden, such as those from Lübberstedt-Bilohe, the greater Hamburg area and Boizenburg, it is not possible to come up with numbers for the women which arrived at Beendorf. We do not know how many left the train from Porta-Westfalica to Beendorf at Fallersleben. Those who left the train at Fallersleben were liberated at Salzwedel.
Reason for this exercise was an argument with relatives of former prisoners who thought their mothers or grandmothers had come from Ravensbrück. My explanation, that date of arrival in Malmö indicates imprisonment in a Neuengamme camp, was commented with ‘She must know where she has been’. With all respect, I don’t think she must. The transport movements of the prisoners, especially in the last days of the war, were chaotic, much is still unclear, and the statements of the prisoners are sometimes inconsistent. Take Magda Eggens, in ‘Jag måste berätta’, the journey from Auschwitz via Weißwasser, Horneburg and Beendorf to Sweden is described as first from Auschwitz via Hamburg to Weißwasser. Barely six months later, when Weißwasser was evacuated, followed a 40 kilometre walk to Horneburg. After Horneburg, they travelled in cattle wagons to Bentdorf [Beendorf] and from Beendorf to Neuengamme. The descriptions of the terrible train journey between Beendorf and Hamburg and the less terrible journey between Hamburg and Padborg are correct, but the journey from Padborg to Malmö is again not correct. She travelled by train. The last ‘white buses’ had left Padborg three days earlier and could only have transported a fraction of the 3,000 or so women. The 40 km walk to Horneburg must have been the march from Weißwasser to the railway station in Senftenberg and Hamburg on the journey to Weißwasser must have been Hamburg on the journey to Horneburg. Magda Eggens‘ books have contributed greatly to the commemoration of the Holocaust. However, the point is the awareness of possible inaccuracies in the memory of the survivors.