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. There were many Jews on this transport from Swabia who had been transferred to the Milbertshofen assembly camp earlier.
This Transport departed from Munich on July 29 1942 and arrived a day later in Theresienstadt. The transport consisted of 50 elderly Jews, the majority being female.
Twenty Jews had been living in Milbertshofen prior to their deportation.
On board were also 14 Jews from Fellheim, a community about 10 kilometers away from Memmingen. Among them were Jews who had been expelled from Memmingen to Fellheim earlier in 1942. Two Jews from Binswangen and three Jews from Buttenwiesen, both small towns in Swabia, and one person from Hirnberg, a hamlet next to Prien am Chiemsee, south-east of Munich, were also on this transport.
Two Jews were taken from Lindwurmstrasse 125 (today listed as No. 127) to Milbertshofen prior to their deportation. In 1938 when the synagogue and community buildings had been destroyed, a back building in Lindwurmstrasse served the Jewish community. 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 after they had been forced out of their apartments and lived there in crowded conditions until their deportation.
According to historian Alfred Gottwaldt, there were 11 survivors from this transport.
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 they were “enemies of the Reich” their assets had been seized.
On July 29, 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 the assembly camp 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 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/20 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.
15-year-old Esther Cohn born 18 September 1926 in Offenbach was on this transport. 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. Excerpts from it can be found in the text describing transport II/1. 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 30 July 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.
She is mentioned in a letter by Judith Hirsch to her friend Erwin Weil. Judith Hirsch had a Jewish father and a German mother and was therefore exempt from deportation until February 1945.
She wrote on 19 August 1942:
“Munich, 19 August 1942
“[…] It will be quite nice in Berg am Laim […] It is terrible in Lohof. Besides my working hours I am on the go for 5 to 6 hours at a time. In the evening I am so tired, I’m exhausted and just fall into bed. […] Tomorrow Harry, Kurt and two Schwalb girls are going swimming. This all has to happen secretly, because we have a curfew and are only allowed to go out for a minimal amount of time. Not to town and only 1 to 3 hours to the forest - in the vicinity. It’s really like jail. It’s terrible.
We now number 170 people […] I did see Esther once again, on the train. The train that goes to Theresienstadt passes through Lohof, and there I stood once again at the barrier. [Lohof is part of the town Unterschleissheim. Jews had to work there in forced labour in a flax roasting plant. The Jewish forced laborers had to walk daily from Milbertshofen to the train station in Feldmoching, where they took the train to Lohhof. Later they were housed in a barrack on the premises] Now my last friend has gone away […] It is raining again today. People are talking about evacuation again. Is this true? […] One is still allowed to send letters, but no parcels or money. Sigi and Hans Ney also wrote to me. It must be terrible there. They all suffer from hunger and have nothing to wear, and now you can’t send anything any more. No one has heard anything from the people who went to Theresienstadt. No one knows what happened to them […]
Lots of greetings and kisses to you,
Yours,
Judith.“
Ida Franziska Schneidhuber was on this transport. She was born in 1892 in Munich and was the widow of the former Nazi politican, Bavarian SA leader, member of the Reichstag and Munich police president, August Schneidhuber. He was murdered in 1934 in the “purge” initiated by Hitler and Göring contra the SA. In Theresienstadt she was among the “prominent” prisoners. Being “prominent” she had relatively better living conditions and also received relatively better food. Ida Schneidhuber survived Theresienstadt.
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