On July 23, 1944, Nazi officers ordered the entire Jewish population of Kos to leave their homes and, along with the Jewish population of nearby Rhodes, to board three small cargo boats. Stripped of their personal belongings and identity papers, these families were taken on an eight day voyage by sea to Piraeus, and from there, crowded into cattle cars, North by train for the 13 day journey to their final destination at Auschwitz. Such was the fate of many Jewish men, women and children throughout the Nazi-occupied territories in Europe, who were forcibly exiled and sent to their deaths.