The train was organized during deportations to Auschwitz in May–July 1944 of 437,000 Hungarian Jews, three-quarters of whom were murdered in the gas chambers. Its passengers were chosen from a wide range of social classes, and included around 273 children, many of them orphaned. The wealthiest 150 passengers paid $1,500 (equivalent to $25,000 in 2022) each to cover their own and the others' escape. After a journey of several weeks, including a diversion to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, 1,670 surviving passengers reached Switzerland in August and December 1944.