I'm writing a story and have been doing some research about the holocaust, and found an article about Fabrikaktion. It was an an event during which many jews were rounded up, and put on good wagons and sent to a camp called Auschwitz. I was wondering how long the journey there was, and if there were any Nazis patrolling the wagons making sure no one got away, and if there were any wagons that crashed, or any jews who escaped on the way to the camp.
Here the original website I found if it is of any importance: http://ww2today.com/27th-february-1943-the-jews-of-berlin-are-rounded-up
What they were referring to as "goods wagons" were likely the trucks which were in this case used to take people from factories to centers from which they were deported to Auschwitz in cattle cars. The Nazis usually deported Jews to extermination camps such as Auschwitz Birkenau in cattle cars with very horrible conditions. Auschwitz was a large camp complex with concentration camp, labor camp, and extermination camp sections. Most of the German Jews deported in February of 1943 were murdered in the gas chambers in the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. About 4000 people escaped the Aktion, and about 1500 of these people survived in hiding. However there were no escapees once people were put on the trains. Some of the deportees from the Fabrikaktion survived because in Auschwitz they were selected for forced labor, a very small number of people, mostly able bodied young men and young women without children were chosen for forced labor and so were not immediately gassed as most of the deportees were. Most of these forced laborers were eventually killed, but some did survive.
Most of the other Jews in Berlin had already been deported and murdered, most of the people deported in the Fabrikaktion were the spouses of non-Jews or were children of interfaith couples, or else were skilled workers or forced laborers in war production. Up until then these people had avoided deportation, however at the end of 1942 the Nazis decided to deport and murder these last Jews in Berlin by the end of March of 1943. This particular Aktion is well known historically because it was the day of the Rosenstrasse protests of women married to Jewish men occurred. This was particularly significant because it was the only mass demonstration against the deportation of Jews in Germany.
The deportations were ordered by the RSHA, and were organized by various groups, mainly the SS but also others, including local police. The deportations themselves were extraordinarily brutal. Usually between 75 to 100 people were stuffed in a cattle car, without windows, with no food, with no room to move or even sit down. Some cars had a bucket of water and an empty bucket for a toilet, but many did not even have these. The trip from Berlin to Auschwitz usually took a a day or two, sometimes longer. Many people died during the journey. These trains were heavily guarded, often with a guard with a machine gun on top of each car. Very few people escaped and almost all who did were murdered. Thousands of railway workers, and the Deutsche Reichsban were also complicit. The trains then arrived at Auschwitz and the prisoners underwent selection, a few able bodied prisoners were chosen to live and the rest were murdered and their bodies burned within a few hours.
"The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin: Facts and Fictions about 27 February 1943: Sixty Years Later" by Wolf Gruner and Ursula Marcum
http://sfi.usc.edu/tags/fabrikaktion
"An Underground Life" by Gad Beck, Beck's description of the Aktion is particularly heart wrenching because he remembers losing his first love, Manfred during the Aktion (though not the one on feb. 27).
https://deportation.yadvashem.org/index.html?language=en&itemId=5092745