<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477394" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Fate Hanged on a Hairbreadth</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was summer,1944. <br>The train stood at the railway station of Gyŏr, <br>halfway on the road<br>between Budapest and Vienna.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the boxcars <br>there were over 3,000 passengers. <br>The Hungarian gendarmes squeezed <br>the deported men, women and children<br>like sardines into the wagons <br>and the prisoners were crying for help. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the SS-Unterscharführer<br>assigned to the transport <br>it was just another job. <br>The corporal already directed<br>many similar trains to the east.<br>And those trains always went to the east<br>and to the same terminus. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">However, this transport of deportees<br>was unlike the others. <br>The SS corporal made a fatal mistake <br>but the guards discovered this <br>only at the Slovakian border.<br>The train's number was not<br>on the list of transports <br>destined for Auschwitz.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The train stopped <br>at the Slovakian border.<br>Here the guards contacted<br>Colonel Adolf Eichmann by telephone<br>and informed him about the error.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Eichmann decided<br>that since the train traveled that far <br>it should continue to Auschwitz. <br>So the SS guards changed the serial number<br>of the train and replaced it with the number <br>of another train departing from Debrecen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus, instead of the death camp<br>of Auschwitz-Birkenau <br>in Nazi occupied Poland, <br>the train from Debrecen<br>was sent to the distribution camp<br>of Strasshof in Austria.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As you see, <br>fate hanged in the war on a hairbreadth.<br>A freak of chance, a random accident, <br>an oversight of procedure, <br>or of a supposed algorithm, <br>could lead to arbitrary decisions<br>regarding the life or death of thousands.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Although Strasshof<br>was a brutal slave labor lager, <br>most people there, <br>about 14,000 of the 21,000 deportees, <br>survived the ordeal of the Holocaust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Paul+Hartal">Paul Hartal</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477394" data-title="Fate Hanged on a Hairbreadth de Paul Hartal" data-description="It was summer,1944. The train stood at the railway station of Gyŏr, halfway on the road between Budapest and Vienna. In the boxcars there were over 3,000 passengers. The Hungarian gendarmes squeezed the deported men, women and children like..."></div> </div> </div>

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