The Last Transport

The deportation of 1,755 Jews from the islands of Rhodes and Cos in July 1944, shortly after the last deportation from Hungary, was the last transport to leave Greece for Auschwitz and brought to a close the last significant phase of the genocide of Europe's Jews (notwithstanding the death marches). Within six weeks of their deportation, the Germans were retreating from Greece and the Balkans as Hitler's empire shrank. This last deportation is frequently acknowledged in Holocaust literature but its significance for our understanding of the Nazi genocide of the Jews remains largely overlooked. The timing of the transport, when it was clear to the German military elite that Nazi Germany had lost the war, raises important questions in relation to long-term ideological Nazi goals and the immediate contingency thrown up by war.Anthony McElligott, in this account of the last Greek transport of Jews to Auschwitz, tells a compelling story of this previously underexplored event and sheds light on an important aspect of the Holocaust through an in-depth study of one Eastern Mediterranean community.

Raises interesting questions relating to the decline of the Nazi party and the German military towards the end of the war

1. Ottomans, Italians, Greeks and Jews of the Aegean2. The Juderia: Space and Community3. Race and Territory: Nazis in the Aegean4. Accolade: The Battle for Rhodes5. Anton Burger: Eichmann's Man in the Aegean6. Lost Lives: A Profile of the Deported7. Murderers and Thieves: Spoils of Genocide8. The Last Transport as Folk Memory and HistoryPostscript: After the War was OverBibliographyNotesIndex