Father ran a one-person general law office near the Alexanderplatz in Berlin until he was disbarred by the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. He and mother rejected the idea of emigration ("what would we do?") and thought they could survive by dividing the house in Westend into two apartments. Nothing could change their minds until father was sent to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen (11-29 Nov. 1938).
I was at home when two Gestapo men came to pick him up the morning after the rampage downtown and, after they had left, phoned him at the office to make himself scarce to which he replied that he "had nothing to fear as a former Officer". Those few weeks in Sachsenhausen destroyed his person altogether, as happened to so many of the 30,000 arrested that week. After that period he was never himself again.

I left in January 1939 on a Kindertransport train that took us to England via Hook van Holland. Later I learned that in 1940 the parents had had to sell the family house where I grew up in Westend, Eschenallee #13a , and had to live in shared accomodation at Roscherstrasse #9, from where they were taken on 21 June 1942 to a collection place at Levetzowstrasse for departure.

Father's last Red Cross note was handwritten on that day: 21 June 1942.
"Dearest children, no news since your December letter. From now on write to ...... instead of Roscherstr. because of impending travel. We are well and hope the same for you and wish you all good fortune, with love, parents."

Research
I did not know what had happened to them until 1944 when the stories about deportations began to come out, although the details came much later. Transport train 16 is listed in both Berlin deportation memorials: at Bhf Grunewald and Lewetzowstr.
In 2005 Dr. Klaus Dettmer of the Berlin Landesarchiv informed me that the database for the Gedenkbuch contains the following entries:
..... Martin Bruck, b. 12.4.1878, in Neisse/Schlesien, University graduate, address in 1939: Eschenallee 13a, and prior to Deportation: Roscherstr. 9. Deportation: No. 16. Transport on 26.6.1942 to the East, date of death unknown.
.....Margarete Bruck, née Hahlo, b. 20.12.1887 in Berlin, same addresses and date of Deportation.

The Gedenkbuch was coauthored in 2001 by Dr. Diana Schulle with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler (Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., the German War Graves Commission) http://www.ghwk.de/engl/book_of_remembrance.htm
In 2005 Dr. Diana Schulle also coauthored with Dr. Alfred Bernd Gottwaldt Deportation of the Jews from the German Reich between 1941 and 1945, publ. in German: Marixverlag, ISBN-10: 3865390595, ISBN-13: 9783865390592.
They were able to specify the final destination of #16 Transport to 'Minsk', and the parents' date of death as 26 June 1942.

Deportation
The map below left shows the 600 km route [red dots]: train #16 from Berlin left 21 June 1942, reached Königsberg, just NE of Danzig, on 24 June in where it was coupled to a waiting train with 568 persons on board from East Prussian places, including 465 from Königsberg.
The combined train with 770 persons, now called #Da40, left Königsberg on 24 June at 10.34 p.m, arrived by early 26 June in Wolkowsyk, Belarus, for reloading the 770 deportees into 26 freight cars to reach Minsk later that day: 26 June 1942.

On 26 June 1942 in Minsk, SS Sergeant Major Arlt logged the arrival of "the expected" train [#Da40] with all 770 deportees "to be looked after".
SS standing orders actually were to "destroy all deportees upon arrival".
Arlt described the activity of his men before that date as "usual" in expectation of the next deportation train's arrival: preparing 60 x 3m pits for massgraves.
From Minsk the deportees were trucked to the woods in Blagowschtschina, adjoining the village of Maly Trostinec. They were told that they would be "settled on farms and estates" and that "suitcases would be sent on separately".
At this point father and mother, 64 and 55 yrs old, had left Roscherstrasse in Berlin 5 - 6 days earlier. When did this frightened and exhausted couple still believe that they would really be "resettled" into a new life?
They were shot next to an open pit in the Blagowschtschina woods outside Minsk on 26 June 1942.

Remembrance
below: Stolpersteine placed by Gunther Demnig 2007 at Berlin, Westend, Eschenallee 13a



























2007 © Vernon Brooks