On December 18 1943, a memo was sent by Chief of the Gestapo Heinrich Müller to the regional police offices requiring that Jewish spouses, whose marriages to non-Jews had ended in either divorce or in the death of their non-Jewish partner, be deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto.
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By that time, 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/7 departed from the Odertor train station on January 8 1944, and arrived at Theresienstadt the next day. It was the eighth of 12 transports consisting of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport included 73 Jews, residents of Breslau and other towns and cities in the province.

Prior to the assembly of the transport, the Head of the Department of Jewish Affairs sent notifications to the State Police Branches (“Aussendienststellen”) of the neighboring cities and towns, asking for certain individuals to be brought to the assembly site 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 site. If they were not found, a manhunt would be instigated.

The deportees were detained in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse, where the offices of the New Jewish Association were located. 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 3rd class passenger cars which were connected to a regular passenger train which probably departed at night. This was sometimes done in a brutal and violent manner. 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 transport was given the reference IX/7 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.
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