In 1944 the Gestapo launched six "small" transports from Munich, consisting of 44 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. In March 1943 the Berg am Laim camp was also closed. On May 1, 1943 only 314 persons were counted as Jews according to the Nuremberg laws. Among them 171 were “full Jews”. 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.

This transport departed from Munich on January 13, 1944 and arrived a day later in Theresienstadt. On board the transport were 33 persons the majority of whom was female. Nineteen came from Munich, one of whom was a woman who had been the last to live in the building that belonged to the Jewish community on Lindwurmstrasse 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. On this transport, one person was from Planegg, today a part of Munich, one from Gauting, south-west of Munich, one from Ammerland and one from Holzhausen, both communities located next to Lake Starnberg. One person on the transport had been taken from prison, four came from Augsburg, two from Fellheim, and the others from Lindau (1), Lindenberg im Allgäu (1) and Neu-Ulm (1). These people were taken to Munich prior to the deportation. Most of the deportees from Munich had been Jewish partners in mixed marriages.

As there was no assembly camp in Munich anymore, the deportees were taken from their apartments and brought to the police station, 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 January 13, the day of deportation, they were taken in the morning 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. If it left from Munich central station the car 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. 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.

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/30 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.
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