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, which was located about 60 km north of Praדgue. 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 March 6, 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 that elderly Jews were not to be included in the transports. Jews who belonged to 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 May 15 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 autumn of 1941, Alfred Hampel, Head of the Department of Jewish Affairs in the Breslau State Police Office, traveled to Berlin where he received guidelines and documents concerning the deportation of Jews to the East. In the following year, the great majority of the Jewish population of Lower Silesia was deported to killing sites near Kaunas and Izbica, to Auschwitz-Birkenau and to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. The only Jews remaining in the provincial capital city of Breslau, living in the rapidly-shrinking Jewish area around Wallstrasse, were employees of the Jewish Community and the Jewish Hospital, bed-ridden inmates of hospitals and old-age homes, Jews married to non-Jewish partners, and the children of such unions (the so-called “Mischlinge”).

Transport IX/4 departed from the Odertor train station on April 2 1943, and arrived at Theresienstadt on the same day. It was the fourth of 12 transports consisting of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport included 276 Jews, residents of Breslau, Görlitz, and the Zionist Agricultural School at Gross Breesen. Some of the deportees had been previously deported to the camps at Riebnig (Rybna) and Grüssau (Krzeszów). Among the deportees were also the bed-ridden inmates of the Jewish community’s old-age home, which had been relocated to the building of the dis-used Jewish Theological Seminary at Wallstrasse in 1941.

Prior to the assembly of the transport, the Head of the Department of Jewish Affairs sent notifications to the State Police Branch (“Aussendienststelle”) of Görlitz asking for certain individuals to be brought to the assembly sites in Breslau. The residents of Breslau who were on this transport were arrested and registered at their homes by uniformed police and NSDAP activists, and were then brought by trucks to the assembly sites. If they were not found, a manhunt would be initiated.

The deportees were detained at two assembly sites: one was in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse, and the other was the hall of the Society of Friends at Neue Graupenstrasse. There, they were questioned by officers from the Department of Jewish Affairs, representatives of the Regional Financial Office of Lower Silesia, legal clerks and officials from the District Government. They were forced to sign a declaration relinquishing their entire property to the State. They had to hand over the keys of their apartments to the clerks of the Regional Financial Office. Officers of the Criminal Police and the Gestapo conducted body searches and examined luggage for money and valuables which were confiscated upon discovery. Sometimes the deportees would undergo mock physical examinations by the Gestapo officers. Afterwards, Gestapo officials escorted by Jewish marshals or NSDAP activists would conduct another search in the apartments of the deportees and then seal them off.

The Jewish community was ordered to provide a Jewish physician and a small team of nurses for the deportees. The medical staff was brought to the assembly site by trucks and was not allowed to leave until the transport had departed.

On the day of the transport, the deportees were marched to the Odertor station and the police closed off the streets through which they passed. The luggage and those unable to march were brought by trucks, operated by a local moving business. They entered the station through a back entrance, and were hurried into train cars which were connected to a regular passenger train scheduled to depart in the morning. This was sometimes done in a brutal and violent manner. The exact time and date of the departure is unknown; the journey took 12 hours at the very least, and possibly longer. The train presumably went west, to Dresden and from there to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz) via Decin (Tetschen) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig).

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 kilometers to Theresienstadt, carrying their hand luggage. Only people who were unable to walk were taken in trucks. The transport was given the reference IX/4 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral IX refers to Breslau. In Theresienstadt, many of the elderly Jewish deportees died of hunger and disease. Others were later transferred to extermination camps in the East where they were murdered.

Of the 276 people on this transport, at least 232 are known to have perished before the end of the war.


Testimony from the memoirs of Karla Wolf, who worked at the Jewish old-age home at the time of the transport:
“The assembly of the elderly for this transport is one of my hardest memories. Most of them were carried to the courtyard on stretchers, and were laid there on the ground, covered in blankets and coats. Most of them did not understand what was actually going on, and they screamed, cursed and yelled. There was great misery. My patients from room 9 were bound by their hands and feet, they waved their hands about them and did not want to leave their warm beds. These sick and elderly people sat all night long in the cold courtyard of the Synagogue. At dawn they were taken. That was the end.”

Among the deportees was Martha Epstein. Born 19.12.1870, this 71 year-old resident of Breslau was deported to Riebnig on 21.10.1942. She sent her children letters from the transit camp, the last of which was sent from Theresienstadt and was probably written just prior to the transport. She ends her letter with the following lines: “And if, God forbid, we shall not remain alive, do not cry, and do not despair; we had to share the fate of millions of our fellow Jews.”

Martha Epstein died in Theresienstadt on 15.10.1943.
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