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 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 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, 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 a top priority. Jews of foreign nationality or those enrolled in the war industry were exempt from deportation.

Very little is known about the third deportation of Jews from Münster to Theresienstadt: The transport departed on June 28, 1943 from Münster and arrived in Theresienstadt the next day. The 33 deportees were residents of Münster and the neighbouring cities Amöneburg, Bielefeld (8 persons), Dortmund, Welte and Salzkotten.

From June 1, 1943 onward, the trains went directly into the ghetto following the connecting railway line from Bauschowitz station to Theresienstadt that the prisoners had been forced to build. The transport was given the reference XI/3 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral XI refers to Münster.

In Theresienstadt, some of the elderly Jewish deportees who had arrived on these transports died of hunger and disease. Only five Jews from this transport survived.

Margot Heuman who at that time was a 15 year-old girl recalls:
“The train stoped in many many cities, and picked up other people; I don’t know the names of the cities, but it was a journey that lasted about two days. And it was a whole train filled up with people; it was a passenger train”.
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