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.
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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 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 belonging to this category would be deported to Theresienstadt. Eichmann also warned the Gestapo not to notify the Jews in advance of their deportation in order to prevent attempts to elude the transport.

On May 15, 1942, the Jewish department 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 a top priority. Jews of foreign nationality or those enrolled in the war industry were exempt from deportation.

Due to the Wehrmacht’s preparation for its summer offensive in southern Russia (Operation Blue), the Reichsbahn directorate in Berlin would not allocate special deportation trains with a capacity of 1,000 people during the period between June 15 and July 10. After the temporally stop was lifted, the authorities started a new wave of deportations. As in previous cases, the guidelines recommended that Gestapo units force the Reich Association of Jews in Germany and local Jewish leaders to assist in preparing the transports.

Hamburg Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann had been pressing very early on for permission to deport the Jews of Hamburg. In a letter to Göring in the Autumn of 1941 he wrote: "I approached the "Führer" in September 1941 after a severe bombing raid and asked him to approve the deportation of the Jews so at least some of the victims of the bombing could be provided with new apartments. The Führer approved it right away and issued all the necessary orders for the removal of the Jews." Already at the beginning of October 1941, two weeks before the nationwide deportation campaign began, the authorities in Hamburg tried to send four large transports with 4,000 Jews to the Lublin district. This first attempt failed because Governor General Hans Frank refused to cooperate.

Shortly after this failed attempt, the deportations from Hamburg began as part of the nationwide program. The first wave of transports from Hamburg left the city during the short period between the end of October and the beginning of December. It consisted of four large transports to Lodz, Minsk and Riga. Among the Jews that were deported in this first wave, very few survived.

During the following six months, deportations from Hamburg were stopped temporarily. On July 3, 1942, Eichmann's deputy in the Jewish department, Rolf Günther sent a letter to several regional Gestapo offices announcing that larger transports would become possible again shortly. As a result, several "special trains" with Jewish deportees left from cities in the German Reich during July.

Three transports were sent from Hamburg during that month, one destined for Auschwitz and two for Theresienstadt. On board these two trains were many members of the Jewish community, which had been dissolved and incorporated into the "Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland" (Reich Association of Jews in Germany) on August 1, 1942. Among the deportees to Theresienstadt were Rabbi Dr. Joseph Norden and Jewish Council member Dr. Walter Rudolphi. Both men were re-deported to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944 and murdered there. With just seven transports between autumn 1941 and summer 1942, the Jewish community of Hamburg was stripped of more than 75% of its members, including most of its leadership.

The first transport from Hamburg to Theresienstadt left the Hannoversche Bahnhof on July 15, 1942 and arrived on July 16. There were 926 deportees on board. Among them were Jews from the surrounding areas of Hamburg including Oldenburg (at least 10), Friedrichsstadt (5), Wilhelmshaven (8), Cuxhaven (2), Aurich (3), Wesermünde (2), Kiel (2) and Norden (2). Historian Alfred Gottwald notes that the group of people originating from places outside Hamburg probably numbered up to 200. They were brought to the building of the elementary school in Schanzenstrasse, which served as an assembly site. The luggage was limited to 50 kilograms and everything else had to be left behind. At the assembly site the deportees had to undergo a humiliating search, fill out an inventory of their property, and sign a document transferring ownership of all their remaining assets to the German Reich.

The Gestapo used the three deportations in July 1942 (the first to Auschwitz, the second and third to Theresienstadt) to empty the buildings of the Warburg housing trust, which had been transformed into "Judenhäuser" ("Jewish buildings"). After the inhabitants had been deported, the buildings were surrendered to the State. In an Interview conducted in 1992, Ingrid Wecker (protected from deportation due to her status as a daughter of a "mixed marriage") recalled the preparations for the transports to Theresienstadt:
"The evacuation of the old people came later ... Mr. Benscher [an employee of the Jewish community] approached me again and said: "Ingrid, you have to help." He provided me with the addresses of some beautiful old mansions where elderly people from old established Hamburg families lived. I helped the old ladies to pack their bags. Mrs. Meyer [interviewer], it was heart breaking. As you know, luggage allowance was limited. I had to repeat time after time: "Please leave this here." They would prefer to leave a warm shawl behind and pack the pictures of their loved ones instead. And the scenes that took place in the old age home in Bundesstrasse! Every piece of luggage had to bear an inscription, stating the evacuation number and the old address in Hamburg. It was plain harassment. I still owned a small can of bronze paint for oven doors and a brush. I used it to write the addresses and evacuation numbers on everyone’s luggage. I went from room to room. They began to call for me: "Please do come here". A slightly younger woman still owned a bit of nail polish remover, which we used to water down the bronze paint. The writing had to be recognizable. Until today, I still have nightmares about packing those bags. To pack them and weigh them. A little more, and we weren't able to close it. Or to pack backpacks. [...] It was awful."

The transports were not a secret. In her autobiographical novel, Berthie Philipp describes the reactions of the local populace when she and others were transported from a Jewish residential home:

" Many curious passers-by stopped to look. Soon they were forming a large circle around the gate to the garden. They tried to open it several times, but were pushed back by members of the uniformed police who stood guard. Every time the policemen turned around, a few spectators slipped past the gate and they thrusted and pushed their way through to the car. No one was able to chase them away as they avidly strove to enjoy the unusual spectacle up close that was created by helplessly paralyzed and frightened humans. A tall, strong and well-dressed man pushed his way to the front row. He commented: "These are Jews who are being expelled from the country. And that is a good thing!"

Luise Solmitz, a so-called "Arian" spouse in a mixed marriage, noted in her diary:
"The trashcans next to their residential home confirmed my foreboding. They were overflowing with the poor remains of their little belongings: colored metal boxes, old bedside lamps, worn out handbags. Children were ransacking them, creating indescribable chaos. A bony, stray mastiff was digging for food. The old lady X. recalled, that when the people were marched out from Kleine Schäferstrasse, they were accompanied by hooting children."

A Jewish woman who was deported from Hamburg to Theresienstadt in July 1942 later recalled how she felt during the train ride:
"It was like driving in a fog, without knowing what would happen. A really terrible feeling. Like entering a fog or falling into an abyss. Because we didn’t know what was happening. But in fact there were real compartments. It was indeed a train. Not like later on, when people were transported like cattle in open wagons."

The journey from Hamburg to Theresienstadt took one day. Due to the fact that the train tracks into Theresienstadt had not yet been constructed, the train stopped in the nearby town of Bohusovice. From there, the deportees had to walk the remaining three kilometers to the Ghetto, carrying their luggage. Only people who were unable to walk were taken in trucks. The transport arrived on July 16, 1943, and was registered as VI/1 in the Ghetto records. The Roman numeral VI referred to Hamburg as the city of origin, the number 1 stood for the first transport from that city.

During the months September and October, 278 of the deportees who arrived on this transport were re-deported to Treblinka and murdered there. A further 23 in 1943 and yet another 124 Jews in 1944 were shipped off to Auschwitz. Out of the 926 deportees who arrived in Theresienstadt with transport VI/1, only 40 survived the war.
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