In 1943 the Gestapo launched two "small" transports from Munich, consisting of 28 Jews altogether.
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Since the closure of the Milbertshofen assembly camp in August 1942, the number of Jews in Munich remained very low. On December 31, 1942 only 645 persons were counted as Jews according to the Nuremberg laws, among them 146 “full Jews”. In March 1943 the Berg am Laim camp was also closed. The majority of people in the last eleven transports from Munich to Theresienstadt were Jews from ‘mixed marriages’ who were scheduled for deportation because their non-Jewish partner had either died or divorced. In February 1943 the RSHA had sent out new deportation guidelines to the local State Police offices. From then on, working in forced labour did not protect anyone from deportation. However, Jewish partners in existing mixed marriages and “Geltungsjuden” (people of mixed ancestry) were still exempt. In May 1943 the guidelines for deportation intensified as Heinrich Himmler ordered that all Jews defined as such according to the Nuremberg laws and still living in Germany had to be deported.

There were ten Jews on the transport which arrived in Theresienstadt on June 25, 1943. Nine had been living in the building that belonged to the Jewish community at Lindwurmstrasse No. 125 (today listed as number 127). 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. One stateless person was taken from the Vinzentiusanstalt, a Catholic charity institution, at No. 10 Klarastrasse. Two of the deportees held Slovakian citizenship which had saved them from previous deportations. Shortly before the deportation, the Jewish community had officially ceased to exist and the majority of these deportees had either worked for the Jewish community or was married to a non-Jew. From then on until the end of the war, Theodor Koroncyk, who was married to a non-Jewish woman, served as the representative of the Reich’s Association of Jews in Germany to the Gestapo and took on all the remaining tasks of the extremely small community of Jews, most of whom were married to non-Jews.

As there was no assembly camp in Munich anymore, the deportees were taken from their apartments and brought to Munich’s police headquarters in Ettstrasse where they were jailed for a few days prior to the deportation. 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 the morning of June 24, the day of deportation, they were taken to the train stations where the transports departed for Theresienstadt. These were Munich’s central train station and the freight train station 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.

At the station, one second-class passenger car awaited them and the deportees were ordered to board the train. Every transport was accompanied by Gestapo members and members of the uniformed police. According to Charlotte Koch’s testimony, this transport left from Munich central station. The car with the deportees was connected to a regular, scheduled passenger train that left Munich 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 Theresienstadt, where it finally arrived a day later.

From June 1 1943 onward, the trains went directly into the ghetto following the connecting railway line from Bauschowitz station to Theresienstadt that the prisoners had been forced to build. The transport was given the reference II/29 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 following months. Others were later transferred to extermination camps in the East, where they were murdered.


Charlotte Koch (b. 1901) was on that transport. In a trial held in 1950, she testifies to her experiences:

On June 15 , 1943 – I remember that day, because it was my father’s birthday – the accused, Grahammer, appeared in Lindwurmstrasse […] and informed me, my husband, my mother and a number of other people that we were going to be sent to Theresienstadt. He said that we had about 4 hours to pack our things. We were going to be picked up by a car at 4 in the afternoon. We should only take the most necessary luggage with us. Grahammer appeared again in the afternoon at around 4 and checked our luggage. […] We then were taken onto a simple, wooden cart and brought to the police headquarters on Ettstrasse. We stayed there for about a week and then, I think it was on June 23 1943, we were taken in the same kind of cart to the central station where we were put onto a train that took us to Theresienstadt.”
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