Following the Munich Conference and the annexation of the Sudetenland to the Reich in October 1938, Nazi anti-Jewish laws were implemented throughout the region. The Jewish population was persecuted and dispossessed of its property (Aryanized). These measures led many Jews to flee, mostly to neighboring Czechoslovakia.
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In 1939, in an attempt to segregate the Jewish population, the local authorities began transferring the Jewish population to camps such as Oder (Edersgrühn) near Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), or to designated communal housing (Judenhäuser).
In September 1941, Reulens, a Gestapo official, informed the regional branch of the Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) in Usti nad Labem (Aussig) that all elderly Jews declared unfit for labor would be relocated to a camp situated in an abandoned castle in the small, remote village of Schönwald. At that time this village, located 30 km from Usti nad Labem, had been declared ‘free of Jews’ (“judenfrei”).
The authorities forced the Association of Jews in Germany to finance the renovation of the castle and to cover all maintenance costs of the camp and its inhabitants.
Similarly, at the end of 1941, the regional council of Litomerice (Leitmeritz) decided to move all of its Jews to a camp in Dlaschkowitz castle.
On 21. May 1943, Rolf Günther, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in Department IVB4, informed all local police headquarters that Heinrich Himmler had ordered 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 was postponed until then. This included sick and infirm Jews, Jews who were still employed in slave labor for the war industry, employees of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden (Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany). The only exemptions were Jews married to non-Jews.
The RSHA initiated transports of the remaining Jews in the Sudetenland region as early as November 1942. Gestapo headquarters in Liberec (Reichenberg), headed by Rudolf Schröder, oversaw the deportations.
The sixth transport left Usti nad Labem to the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 11 June 1943. It consisted of four persons: 43 year old Adolf Glässner, chairman of the Usti nad Labem offices of the Association of Jews in Germany, his wife Hedwika Maria and their 19 year old daughter Anita, all residents of Usti nad Labem; the fourth person on this transport was 62 year old Emil Steiner who was previously interned at the Schönwald camp.
Very little is known about this transport. It is assumed that the deportees were driven in buses or trucks from Usti nad Labem to Theresienstadt. Prior to their deportation, the deportees were searched and all valuable items in their possession were confiscated. In the Theresienstadt Ghetto listings the transport was recorded as XIX/5 where the Roman numeral XIX refers to the area of Usti nad Labem.
According to historian Rudolf Wlaschek, none of the four deportees on transport are known to have survived. They were deporteed to Auschwitz on October 1944, and were in all likelihood murdered upon arrival.
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