Towards the end of November 1941, the Nazi authorities began to deport the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia (the Protectorate) to the fortress city of Theresienstadt, about 60 km north of Prague. The city’s 18th century fortress now served as a ghetto. Thousands of deportees were housed in the army barracks under terrible conditions. By depicting Theresienstadt as a "model of Jewish settlement" and thus concealing its role as a transit camp for Jewish deportees, the Nazis were able to camouflage their true objectives and policies namely, the mass annihilation of the Jews.
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Commencing in January 1942, transports began to leave Theresienstadt for Riga. Later, some of the transports were sent to extermination camps and murder sites, including Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maly Trostenets.

At the Wannsee Conference on January 20 1942, Head of the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) Reinhard Heydrich announced that Hitler had authorized the evacuation of the Jewish population in Europe to the East. Heydrich added that the evacuation of the Reich’s Jews would be given priority because of housing problems and other socio-political considerations. Jews over the age of 65, war invalids, or Jews decorated with the Iron Cross would be sent to the newly established “old people’s ghetto” – Theresienstadt.

On 6 March, following Heydrich’s announcement, Adolf Eichmann, Director of the Department of Jewish and Dispossession Affairs (Department IVB4) in the RSHA, convened a meeting of Gestapo delegates from all over the Reich to discuss the measures necessary to carry out the deportation of 55,000 Jews from Germany and the Protectorate. Eichmann stressed not to include elderly Jews in the transports. Jews of this category would be deported to Theresienstadt. Eichmann also warned the Gestapo not to notify the Jews in advance about their deportation in order to prevent attempts to elude the transport.

On 15 May 1942, Department IVB4 issued new guidelines signed by Gestapo Head Heinrich Müller, regarding the deportation of Jews to the “old people’s” ghetto in Theresienstadt: The evacuation of the residents from old age homes was cited as the top priority. Jews of foreign nationality or those enrolled in the war industry were exempt from deportation.

In the month of June 1942 the Gestapo launched ten relatively small transports from Munich, consisting of 500 Jews altogether.

On May 1 1942, Heinrich Himmler sent a note to Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service, requiring the immediate deportation of 120 patients from the Jewish hospital in Munich. He wanted the building to serve as a nursing school for the “Lebensborn” program, the Nazi breeding program which was established to ensure the continuation and domination of the Aryan race.

Theodor Koronczyk, the representative of the Jewish community to the Gestapo, received a list with the names of the 150 deportees scheduled to board the first three transports, nearly all of them patients and staff of the Jewish As the Gestapo had already searched the individuals and their luggage in the hospital, the deportees were taken in removal vans directly to the station and did not pass through the Milbertshofen assembly camp.

On the morning of the deportation day, June 3 1942, the patients were herded into the removal vans and were taken from the hospital in Hermann-Schmid-Strasse 5-7 to the southern railway station which was about one kilometer away. Several Gestapo members and members of the uniformed police accompanied the transport.

There, one second-class passenger car awaited them which was shunted to Munich’s central station and then attached to a regular, scheduled passenger train that left the station every day at around 12:00 for Marktredwitz. The car was then attached to several other local passenger trains in succession which travelled via Moosach, Freising, Landshut, Regensburg, Schwandorf, Marktredwitz, Eger, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig) to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz), where it finally arrived a day later.

The deportees were taken off the train at Bohusovice station and forced by the awaiting SS personnel and Czech gendarmerie to walk the approximate 3 km to Theresienstadt, carrying their backpacks. Only people who were unable to walk were taken in trucks.

This transport consisted of 50 Jews, the majority (34 persons) of whom were elderly women from the Jewish hospital in Hermann-Schmid-Strasse. There were former staff members of the hospital on board who had come from Milbertshofen and the Berg am Laim assembly camp, and also one person from Pähl, a village next to Weilheim, 40 kilometers south-west of Munich.

The transport was given the reference II/1 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral II refers to Munich. In Theresienstadt many of the elderly Jewish deportees who had arrived on these transports died of hunger and disease during the summer months. Others were transferred in the following months to extermination camps in the East where they were murdered.

This is an excerpt of the testimony of Dr. Julius Spanier (1880 – 1959), then the Head doctor of the Jewish community’s hospital:

“The order came in June 1942 that the nurses’ home and hospital had to be liquidated and closed, or, as the official language put it: the “evacuation” of the Jewish community hospital in Munich to Theresienstadt. On June 4 1942 [he errs regarding the exact date] the first transport left under the command and supervision of the Gestapo and the SS. About 50 sick and invalid patients, even people who were dying, together with three nurses and led by the head doctor, were put on stretchers in a removing van. The whole “load” was dropped off at the Southern railway station and transferred into the railway cars which were ready to depart. During the deportation Hermann-Schmid-Strasse was closed for traffic. Only a Wehrmacht Major was allowed to pass through the street. As he saw the eerie transport, he asked the head nurse the reason for the strange procedure. When he was truthfully informed, full of dismay and regardless of the adjacent Gestapo and SS, he shouted out in a loud and clearly audible voice: “What? Sick and dying people? I am ashamed to be German!” After this first transport two more followed in short succession. The house – the Jewish nurses’ home and hospital in Hermann-Schmid-Strasse - which provided so much good for everyone regardless of their creed, was emptied. It was designated by the authorities to house the “Jungborn” - the breeding site for the fanatical German racial programme.”

The following is an excerpt from the diary of Esther Cohn, born September 18 1926 in Offenbach. She was lightly impaired having suffered from polio as a child. In 1938 her father had emigrated to London, from where he tried to get his family out of Germany. Fleeing air raids in their hometown, Esther moved to Munich in 1940 together with her two sisters Miriam and Eva and her mother Sylvia. There she lived in the Antonienheim children’s home at Antonienstrasse 7 which was closed in April 1942 and relocated to the Milbertshofen assembly camp. She continued to write her diary in which she talks about the evacuation of the Jewish hospital and describes the conditions in Milbertshofen. Her mother and two sisters had returned to Offenbach, and were later deported to Gurs and Rivesaltes. Esther’s sisters were able to hide and flee to Switzerland in April 1943. On July 30 1942, Esther was deported on transport II/20, prisoner number 957, to Theresienstadt and, on 16 October 1944, on transport Er, prisoner number 1289, to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Her mother Sylvia was also deported to Auschwitz.

Jews’ settlement Milb[ertshofen].,
on 2.6.1942
Evening, 6:45
Now they have taken away the children’s home we have arrived here with mixed feelings after being loaded onto a removal van. Only 13 children, Ms Jacobi and Ms Bdx remain from the home. All the other children and women were evacuated on April 1 which was soon followed by the closure of the children’s home. We had to work hard but the days passed quickly. The last days though were particularly nerve-racking for me because I was told I had to join the transport. It turned out to be a mistake and after three long days of anticipation and fear it was revoked. It was a mistake made by the (Jewish) community. My luggage is ready though and I am sure that I will have to make use of it soon
From tomorrow through Friday the whole hospital is going to be evacuated. Sick people from the camp were singled out for transport and were picked up yesterday at noon in the pouring rain with an ordinary bus. Two barracks have been prepared with mattresses which implies further evacuations. I don’t care what will happen to me, I am only scared that I won’t be able to communicate with my loved ones. Come what may, I wait and take everything calmly.

[...] The camp consists of 12 barracks, 2 washing barracks (shower rooms etc.), 1 laundry barrack, 2 lavatory barracks, 1 kitchen and canteen barrack, the administration, 1 bike room, and the guard’s barrack. These barracks formerly belonged to an SA camp in Oberach at Tegernsee.

Everything is quite orderly. Very different types of people can be observed here and I am happy that no one has been assigned to our barrack. At 60 years of age one is still a baby here and only at 80 one starts to grow up. At maybe 94 one becomes an adult [The overwhelming majority at the camp was past 60]. We number about 500 evacuees, but that figure changes hourly […] Maybe Judith will also join us now that the nurses’ home is going to be liquidated.”
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