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 regulations also gave guidelines for the procedure of the deportation. In case of smaller deportations up to 400 Jews, special cars, connected to regular trains, were to be used.
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By April 1943, the great majority of the Upper Silesian Jews had already been deported. The elderly were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto in the winter of 1942, and those Jews who were not protected by employment with the Jewish community or by marriage to a non-Jewish partner were sent to the Lublin district and to the Auschwitz extermination camp in the summer of 1942 and the early spring of 1943.

This Transport departed from the Oppeln train station on June 30, 1943 and arrived at Theresienstadt on the same day. It was the sixth of 10 transports comprising of elderly Jews and others from the province of Upper Silesia who had until now been protected from deportation. The transport consisted of five Jews: 84 year-old Julie Gerstel of Oberglogau, 30 year-old Artur Krause, a glassworker from Neisse, 19 year-old Hermann Proskauer of Oppeln, 65 year-old Harry Wolff, chairman of the Jewish community in Oppeln, and his assistant, 32 year-old Fritz Guttmann.

Presumably, several days prior to the deportation, the deportees were notified by the Gestapo. They were ordered to report to an assembly point in Oppeln. They were ordered to settle their bills and debts, and bring up to 10kg of luggage and the keys to their apartments.

At the assembly point, they were registered and forced to sign a declaration relinquishing their entire property to the state.

Later, they were marched to the Main Train Station (Hauptbahnhof) in Oppeln through a main street, escorted by Gestapo personnel and uniformed police. At the train station they were forced to enter a railway car (probably a passenger car) that was attached to a regular passenger train. The train’s route was presumably to Breslau, from there to Dresden and finally to the recently-constructed train station in Theresienstadt.

The transport was given the reference XVIII/6 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral XVIII refers to Oppeln.

According to historian Alfred Konieczny, Mrs. Gerstel perished in Theresienstadt on 5.2.1944. Young Hermann Proskauer was apprehended by the Gestapo on 20.2.1945 and was presumably killed. The other three deportees were sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in September and October of 1944 where, in all likelihood, they were murdered upon arrival.


Fritz Guttmann’s sister Matylda Kluge, a Jewish resident of Oppeln who was protected by marriage to a non-Jewish spouse, reports in her testimony:
“After that [previous] transport, the following people remained in Opole: Harry Wolf, Fritz Gutmann and Herman Proskauer. They were taken on July 29 1943 to Theresienstadt. I received a postcard from my brother Gutmann and from the lawyer Wolf. Afterwards, only Jews living in mixed marriages remained.”
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