On May 21 1943, Rolf Günther, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in Department IVB4, informed all local police headquarters of Heinrich Himmler’s order to complete all deportations of Jews from the Greater Reich and the Protectorate to the East and to Theresienstadt by June 30 1943. The new regulations included several groups of Jews whose deportation had been postponed until then. This included sick and infirm Jews, Jews who were still employed as slave labourers for the war industry, and employees of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden (Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany). The only exemptions were Jews who were married to non-Jews. The regulations also provided guidelines regarding the procedure of the deportations. In the case of smaller deportations consisting of up to 400 Jews, special cars, connected to regular trains, were to be used.
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By the spring of 1943, the great majority of the Jewish population of Lower Silesia had already been 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 were living in the rapidly-shrinking Jewish area around Wallstrasse where the community offices and the Jewish hospital were located.

Transport IX/6 departed from the Odertor train station on June 16 1943 and arrived at Theresienstadt on the same day. It was the sixth of 12 transports made up of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport included 18 Jews who were residents of Breslau. On this transport were the remaining members of the Jewish community administration including its chairman, Martin Pollack, the chairman of the Synagogue community Georg Kohn, and the senior staff of the Jewish hospital whose patients had been deported to Theresienstadt six days earlier. After the departure of this transport, the only Jews remaining in Breslau were those who were married to non-Jewish spouses.

The Breslau residents who were on this transport were arrested and registered at their homes by uniformed police NSDAP and activists, and were then brought to the assembly site. Except for one, all of the deportees were living nearby. They were assembled in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse. 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. Afterwards, Gestapo officials escorted by NSDAP activists would conduct another search in the apartments of the deportees and then seal them off.

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 a 3rd class passenger car which was connected to a regular passenger train scheduled to depart in the morning. 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/6 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 18 deportees, at least 15 are known to have died before the end of the war.

Siegmund Hadda, Director of the Jewish Hospital in Breslau, wrote in his memoirs: “In the courtyard of the community offices, we were numbered like pieces of luggage. On the piece of paper that was handed to us, we could see the identification code of the transport in Roman numerals, and that of our own, by which we were numbered in the list in Arabic numerals.

Three uniformed policemen, one of which was armed with a submachine gun, escorted us through side streets to a rear entrance of the main station. Obviously, they were afraid the population, namely the working men […] would know.

We were not yelled at, and we did not have to climb into cattle cars; we used a 3rd-class passenger car. The watchmen did not pay any attention to us. The three policemen played cards throughout the entire twelve-hour journey […]

We arrived at the train station Bauschowitz under light rainfall at the late afternoon, tired from the long journey. From there we still had a foot march to Theresienstadt ahead of us. Our guards handed the transport over to a Czech gendarme, who not only barked orders in a rough voice, but also imitated our tormentors from the Gestapo. When the daughter of our chairman marched too quickly, he gave her a slap. We had to march slowly in pairs to the camp. During that time most of the older deportees had trouble carrying their luggage. Fortunately, a few young Jews approached us with a wagon and took our meager belongings.

After half an hour, we passed through the barbed wire fence that surrounded the camp. Can anyone imagine how it felt when we had to bid farewell to the last bit of freedom that we still had?

[…] In an old barracks, which served as “Schleuse”, we had to hand over our luggage along with the keys to our apartments to the Gestapo. After several days we received our belongings again after they had been plundered. It should be noted that, except for the Gestapo personnel, the men of the Jewish auxiliary group also engaged in theft […] The Gestapo gave the women’s belongings over Czech National-Socialists, the so-called Berušky, who plundered them once more.”
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