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 July 1942 the Gestapo launched eleven relatively small transports from Munich, consisting of 550 Jews altogether.
This transport departed from Munich on July 22 1942 and arrived a day later in Theresienstadt. The transport consisted of 50 elderly Jews, the majority of them female. Seven Jews were taken from Lindwurmstrasse 125 (today listed as No. 127) to Milbertshofen. That building – ceded by the local NSDAP branch to the Jews – had provided shelter for the Jewish community since 1938, when the synagogue and community buildings in Herzog-Max-Strasse had been destroyed. A prayer room and office space had been set up. From here the Jewish community sent out the deportation orders. Many Jews moved to that building and lived there in crowded conditions after they had been forced out of their apartments.
Sixteen persons had been living in the Berg am Laim camp, and one person came from Grafing, a town about 35 kilometers east of Munich. According to historian Alfred Gottwaldt, there were 16 survivors.
The Gestapo had forced Munich’s Jewish community to assist with organizing the transports. A card index with the names and addresses of all Munich’s Jews existed in triplicate at the Aryanization department, the office of the Jewish community and at Munich’s Gestapo headquarters. This index was used to assemble the different transports. The Gestapo determined the criteria of the transports based upon age, ability to work and other factors. About a week before the planned transport, the Gestapo instructed the Jewish community to inform the victims of their forthcoming “evacuation” to Theresienstadt.
The community also had to finance the transports, provide food for the deportees and pay helpers to deal with the luggage. One or two days before the deportation, the deportees who were not yet living in the Milbertshofen assembly camp, were picked up from their apartments by the Gestapo in large, closed removal vans and taken to the assembly camp. This usually took place during the night or in the early morning. In Milbertshofen they stayed for a day or two. They were searched and their last valuables were confiscated. The deportees had to endure bureaucratic procedures and undergo the final stages of expropriation. Their declarations of property were collected and they were informed that because of they were “enemies of the Reich” their assets had been seized.
On July 22, the day of deportation, they were woken up and had to leave the assembly camp in Milbertshofen in the morning. Every transport was accompanied by Gestapo members and members of the uniformed police.
Closed furniture trucks or buses were used to transport the Jews approximately 10 kilometers from Knorrstrasse to the train stations where the transports departed for Theresienstadt. These were Munich’s central train station and the freight train station located in the Munich-Laim district. It is still disputed whether the majority of transports left from Munich’s central station or from Munich Laim station. Historian Andreas Heusler argues that the majority left from the central station, but several testimonies indicate otherwise.
At the station, one second-class passenger car awaited them. The deportees were ordered to board the train, usually at around 9 in the morning. If it left from Munich central station the car was connected to a regular, scheduled passenger train that left Munich every day at around 12 for Marktredwitz. The car was then attached to several other local passenger trains in succession and travelled via Moosach, Freising, Landshut, Regensburg, Schwandorf, Marktredwitz, Eger, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig) to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz), where it would have finally arrived a day later. If it left from Munich Laim freight station, the car would have been shunted to Munich central station, from where the procedure would be as above.
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.
The transport was given the reference II/18 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.
The following is a testimony by Gertrude Spies, b. January 13 1897, who had moved in 1929 with her daughter from her hometown Trier to Munich, and was deported on July 22 1942. In 1945 she returned, one of about 160 Munich Jews who survived and continued her literary work. Gertrude Spies died shortly before her 101st birthday in Munich in 1997.
“The seventeenth of July 1942 was a warm summer day. I went home from an evening visit – furtively, anxiously, looking all around me to see whether I was observed. For it was long past nine and I should not have been out anymore. Stop, no light in the hallway – better to fumble upstairs in the dark. The house was full of treachery, full of foreign eyes.
I opened the door, turned on the light. A thick yellow letter was on the floor. What was that? My heart started to beat violently. From the Jewish Cultural Society? I ran into the room, put the letter on the table – I knew everything. The transport.
It was very quiet in the apartment; my daughter had gone out. With shaking hands I opened it; I read an immense number of regulations, commands – everything went black before my eyes; I started to run back and forth in the large apartment, the speechless rooms – no sound, no human soul! What to do? How to deal with this monster which had attacked me? Had they not assured us again and again that the so-called prominent people would not be put away? In my confusion I ran out. What else could happen if I disobeyed this order! To be alone was worse.
The people on the first floor were always friendly. They still said hello, even now. Surely they would let me make a telephone call. My own phone had already been taken away. I rang the bell. I rang it again. Oh yes – it was already after ten. A disturbance in the night. But now I heard footsteps. Thank God. The man of the house opened. “Excuse me,” I said, “I beg you to allow me to make a telephone call.” He looked at me; he did not say a word – perhaps he thought I was ill-mannered? I had to explain, to win his heart. With great reluctance: “I – I will be taken away – with the transport – I –“ Here the man shook his head, looked at me sadly, and closed his door. I ran outside.
Here, everything was darkened. It was war, after all, and the city was covered in total darkness. It started to rain. I spoke to a stranger, asking him to give me a light in a telephone booth. He wanted to know why. I told him. He was alarmed, gave me some light, and fled. From my fate? From his conscience? I called an acquaintance, could he spend the night at my house – please! The rain grew heavier, I waited. An hour later we arrived at home, totally drenched.
Shortly thereafter my daughter came home. I turned off the light. Let her think I had gone to bed already. Let her sleep one more night quietly and without care.
Three days later she stood by the window and looked down the street when the big black car arrived. She turned to me; her face was as white as the wall. “They are coming,” she said. And then came the farewell.
From Camp Milbertshofen, where they kept us overnight and where they lightened our luggage by half its weight, a closed furniture truck took us to the train. On a side track, we were loaded onto the train. From the surrounding homes binoculars were turned on us. The train left. Who of us would ever see Munich again?
And now: Were we going to Poland? Or to Czechoslovakia? The men watched station by station. Theresienstadt, they had told us, was a camp for the privileged. Perhaps it was “only” Theresienstadt we would have to endure? We were an oddly thrown together community, as we sat there, all strangers and yet bound together by the darkness of the future, the fear, and – at this hour – by the threat of being shot, should we put our heads out of the window.
The next day we arrived in Bauschowitz, Czechoslovakia. Light rain falling from low-hanging clouds. In the mud and the rain, old and sick people were lying about, left there from the transport which had arrived ahead of us from who knows where, and waited to be called. We went on foot to Theresienstadt. Our luggage was to follow. First sight upon our arrival: A funeral car not drawn by horses. People pulled it. Also, no coffins – bread was transported in it. An entire funeral car filled with loaves of bread for the banished. Later, we got used to this sight. After they looted our hand luggage, we were led through the village. Incredible! Where was the senior citizens home, the residence of which they had spoken to us? Where were the clean houses, where everybody would have their own well-furnished room? Through open doors we saw shapes in rags lying on the floor or on wooden frames. Groups of misery were led to pick up food; each carried his own little container in his hand. They took us to our quarters.”
Eugenie Gorter was on this transport. She was born in 1874 in Munich and had received high honours during WWI due to her work as a nurse for the Red Cross under the most difficult circumstances. In Theresienstadt she was among the “prominent” prisoners. Being “prominent” she had relatively better living conditions and also received relatively better food. She survived Theresienstadt and died in 1953.
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