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.
Show more Commencing in January 1942, transports started to leave Theresienstadt for Riga. Later, some of the transports were sent to extermination camps and murder sites, including Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maly Trostenets.

In June 1942, the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office) embarked on mass deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria to Theresienstadt. The Jews sent there were mostly elderly (above the age of 65). They belonged to various groups consisting primarily of those who had earned high military decorations and citations during the First World War, people of international renown, and Jews who had formerly been married to non-Jewish spouses. Included in the last group were what the Nazis coined Mischling, that is, the offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish unions (a term literally meaning "crossbreed"). Essentially these were Germans deemed by the Nazi racist laws to be Jewish because they did not have full Aryan ancestry.

Following the two big deportations in June and July 1942, five smaller transports were carried out from September consisting of about 50 Jews each. The remaining members of the Jewish administration were on these transports. Several Jews from so-called mixed marriages were also deported. On these transports, an additional 242 persons were sent to Theresienstadt by the end of the year. From then on the only Jews allowed to stay in Cologne were those married to non-Jewish spouses.

The fifth transport from Cologne to Theresienstadt left the Cologne-Deutz-Tief train station on September 19 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt on the same day. There it was given the reference III/5, the Roman numeral III signifying the city of Cologne. The transport consisted of 50 people including four Jews from Duesseldorf and one from Bonn. Thirty four of the deportees were women and 16 were men. The average age of the deportees was 53 and a half. The youngest deportee was a four year old girl, and the oldest deportee was an 82 year old man.


One of the deportees was Helmut Lohn, born 1914. He belonged to a group of 20 people from the aid force of the Jewish community who supplied the Jews waiting for deportation with food and helped with the dispatch. Shortly after the end of the war he described his deportation as follows:

"Then there was another long break until the beginning of September 1942. As there were only 300 "full" Jews left in Cologne, weekly transports consisting of 50 Jews in single cars were sent to Theresienstadt. I was included in one of these transports in September. Of course these transports were easier to dispatch than the big transports of 1000 people."
In September 1944, Helmut Lohn was deported to Auschwitz. From there he was transported to Dachau and afterwards to Gross-Rosen. After the liberation he lived in Cologne for a short time and then emigrated to Brasil.


Caroline Blumenthal, born 1900 in Cologne, was also included in this transport with her second husband Otto Blumenthal and her daughter Ruth (born Rosenbaum, married Herzka), born 1924 in Cologne. She relates that her husband hurt his neck on the journey and was treated by one of the Jewish nurses who was also on the transport. The luggage was transported in the last car of the train but when the train arrived in Theresienstadt the Blumenthal family did not get it back.

Ruth Blumenthal was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz and was finally liberated in Mauthausen. After the war she emigrated to the United States. Caroline and Otto Blumenthal were liberated in Theresienstadt and also emigrated to the United States.
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