Death Transports

The transport was heading for the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria on 25 January 1945, led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Wolle of the SS-Standarte Auschwitz-Oranienburg. Due to lack of available space in Mauthausen, the train was not accepted and returned on 26 January. This transport, one of many to extermination camps, is known as a "death transport" due to the inhumane conditions under which prisoners were transported.

After the war, all information about the victims’ graves was collected, and in 1945 and 1946 the bodies of the tortured prisoners were exhumed and identified using prison numbers. Unfortunately, identification was successful in only 15 cases. According to incomplete records, 117 prisoners died just on the stretch between Kaplice and Horní Dvořiště. They were subsequently buried in three mass graves (Omlenice, Netřebice, Horní Dvořiště).

In the mass grave in Omlenice rest the remains of 63 victims of the transport – mainly of Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and French nationality. These victims were buried in a common grave on 30 May 1946. The remains came from the following sites: Velenov – 4 victims, Podolí – 5 victims, Suchdol – 19 victims, Trojany – 11 victims, Pšenice – 8 victims, Certlov (Rybník) – 11 victims, Bujanov – 5 victims.

The memorial was designed by academic sculptor František Kratochvíl from Prague and was restored in 1999 by the Omlenice municipal office.

According to incomplete information, 117 prisoners died between Kaplice and Horní Dvořiště and were buried in the three above-mentioned mass graves.