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 30 June 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 for 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 capital city of Breslau were those married to non-Jewish spouses or the children of such unions. The non-Jewish spouses were under constant pressure to divorce their Jewish partners. Once such a divorce was ratified, the Jewish spouse would be put on a deportation list.
Transport IX/6 Ez departed from the Odertor train station presumably on October 27 1943 and arrived at Theresienstadt on the same day. It was the seventh of 12 transports meant for the elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. However, this was marked a Special Transport consisting of a single deportee, Curt Unger, a 45 year-old Doctor of Law, native of Brieg and a former high-ranking municipal official.
Little is known of Special Transports such as this one. Dr. Unger was presumably arrested by the Gestapo and brought to the State Police Office in Anger Street, where he was detained for an unknown period of time. Prior to his deportation, he was forced to sign a declaration relinquishing his entire property to the State.
On the day of the transport, Dr. Unger was taken to the Odertor station with his luggage. He presumably entered the station through a back entrance, and was put under guard in either a passenger car or a prisoner car which was connected to a regular passenger train. 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 Theresienstadt via Decin (Tetschen) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig).
The transport was given the reference IX/6 Ez in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral IX refers to Breslau, and the letters Ez mark it as a Special Transport (“Einzeltransport”). 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. Dr. Unger did not share their fate: at the end of the war, he was liberated in Theresienstadt.
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