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 6 March, 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 not to include elderly Jews in the transports. Jews of this category would be deported to Theresienstadt. Eichmann also warned the Gestapo not to notify the Jews in advance about their deportation in order to prevent attempts to elude the transport.

On 15 May 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 the 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 15 June and 10 July. New orders specified that Jews would be deported in a single rail car with a capacity of 50 people. The car would be attached to a regular passenger train. During 1942, small transports of 50 Jews departed only from Berlin and Munich. The deportees were permitted to bring a sum of 50 Reichmarks, a suitcase, a full set of clothes, suitable shoes, bedding, tableware and food supplies for eight days.

As in previous cases, the guidelines recommended that Gestapo units force the Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany and local Jewish communities to assist in preparing the transports.

The department for Jewish Affairs at the Berlin Gestapo, headed by SS-Untersturmführer Gerhard Stübs and his deputy Kriminaloberinspektor Franz Prüfer was put in charge of organizing the transports together with the Department of Jewish Affairs in the RSHA.

On 31 May 1942, Franz Prüfer informed Board Member of the Jewish community (JKV) Philipp Kozower of the planned transports.

In the month of June 1942 the Gestapo launched 13 "small" transports from Berlin, consisting of 750 Jews altogether.

This transport departed from Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin on June 5, 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt in the early evening of the same day. The transport consisted of 100 Jews, of whom 80 were women and 20 were men. The average age of the deportees was 42.7. The youngest was two years old and the oldest was aged 85. Eleven of the deportees were under the age of twelve. Ten of them were between the ages of 13 and 18, 29 between the ages of 19 and 45, 28 between the ages of 46 and 60, and 22 of the deportees were between 61 and 85. Twenty one of the deportees were residents of the old age home in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, which was being closed down to establish a Sammellager (assembly camp) instead.

These elderly people, aged between 61 and 85, were a minority in this transport as most of the deportees were members of a resistance group which had attacked an anti-Semitic and anti-Communist propaganda exhibition curated by Goebbels. On 18 May 1942 the exhibition “Das Sowjetparadies” [The Soviet Paradise] was opened in the Lustgarten in Berlin and on the same day a group of resistance fighters the largest among them, the Gruppe Baum (Baum Group) headed by Herbert Baum, tried to set fire to the display. The Gruppe Baum had many Jewish members. The operation failed, the fire was extinguished and the exhibition suffered little damage, but this anti-fascist act echoed throughout Germany and the cost for the Jews of Berlin in general, and for the members of the group in particular, was very high.

The Gestapo reacted very quickly and within a few days all of the members of the group were arrested, including Baum and his wife Marianne. Baum was tortured to death in prison and it took the Gestapo very little time to dismantle the whole group and sentence all its members to death except for three women who were sent to Auschwitz where they perished. In reprisal, the Gestapo conducted a large raid in Berlin on 27 May in which 500 Jews were taken hostage. 154 of them were transferred to the SS camp Lichterfelde, a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen, where they were immediately shot. An additional 96 Jews who were already imprisoned there were also shot. In all, 50 men for each of the five Jewish perpetrators who had staged the attack.

Their family members were sent by the Gestapo to Theresienstadt. In addition, 250 Jews were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp shortly afterwards where they were murdered.

As in the previous two transports the deportees were woken up on the day of the deportation between two and three in the morning, received a simple breakfast prepared by the Jewish community and had to leave the building in Grosse Hamburger Strasse at approximately 04:00. They marched a few hundred meters to Monbijouplatz, where a BVG streetcar (Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe - Berlin Transportation Company) awaited them. At around 05:00 they were aboard the tram and were transferred expeditiously to Anhalter Bahnhof located on Schöneberger Strasse where they arrived by 05:15. There, through a side entrance, they were led to platform No. 1 and were ordered to board two old third-class rail cars, ordered from the Reichsbahn. The cars were connected to a regular, scheduled passenger train that left the train station every day at around 06:00 for Dresden where it stopped for a few hours. On the first transports the deportees received a stew provided by the Dresden Jewish community. In Dresden the cars with the Jews were connected to another regular passenger train headed for Prague.

The train's route took the deportees from Berlin to Dresden and along the river Elbe to Decin (Tetschen), Usti nad Labem (Aussig) and finally to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz). The deportees were taken off the train at the Bohusovice station and forced by the awaiting SS personnel and Czech gendarmerie to walk the approximate 3 km to Theresienstadt, carrying their backpacks. Only people who were unable to walk were taken in trucks.

The transport was given the reference I/3 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings where the Roman numeral I refers to Berlin. In Theresienstadt many of the elderly Jewish deportees who had arrived on these transports died of hunger and disease during the summer months. Others were later transferred to extermination camps in the East where they were murdered.

According to historian Rita Meyhöfer, 25 people who were on the first three transports from Berlin to Theresienstadt survived.

This was the third of 123 transports that was organized from Berlin to Theresienstadt during the war.

Testimony by Frieda Steinhagen, in the trial vs. Otto Bovensiepen:

“On the 4 or 5 of June 1942 a representative of the Jewish community from Oranienburger Strasse came to my apartment and informed me that in the coming days I and my son would be picked up and sent to a camp. He added that we were going to be sent to Theresienstadt and were allowed to take with us 50 kilograms of luggage. (…) On the 5 or 6 of June one or two Gestapo men appeared at my door and took me and my son to the collection point in Grosse Hamburger Strasse (…) I went there in the tram, accompanied by the Gestapo. We stayed in Grosse Hamburger Strasse for one day. The next morning we were brought to the train station (…) It was the Anhalter Bahnhof (…) I still remember that, before we left, we were frisked by [Gestapo] women (…) and I had to give them my wristwatch and my ink pen. (…) We went by train, which was sealed, and we arrived in the evening in Leitmeritz. On the way the train stopped at a station in Dresden and a member of the Jewish community came and remarked that our transport was made up of widows. That same evening we marched on foot from Leitmeritz to Theresienstadt.”

Video Testimony by Esther Elad-Bagansky, whose father was among the Jews who were shot:

“That night my father was taken and the German official told him, ‘We are taking you to the train station’ (…) The next morning, and this I remember, my mother told us that we stay at home and only she would go out to the train station to see if father was still there. But father was no longer there. (…) He just told us ’Good bye, and I hope to see you, when I return’ (…) After that they took us too (…) She went and asked after him and only then was she told that he was sent to some labour camp (…) We did not know where he was, but we knew what happened to him, even during the war. (…) One morning I saw that my mother did not go to work. She said that she didn't have to go to work that day. Instead, she packed a suitcase and dressed us with more clothes than usual, but she said nothing. She must have had the notion or feeling that we might be the next in line and that they might come and take us. The other Jewish family that lived next to us was already gone (…) Later on, they were knocking on our door … they are coming to take us. It is nighttime (…) They took us to the car (…) To the train station. We stayed at the train station until morning (…) There were dogs (…) It was a regular train (…) We are talking about the month of June 1942 (…) A small group of mothers and children, few fathers. And then we were told to board the train. "Where are we going?" I asked my mother and she said: We are travelling (…) There were some who cried a lot, there were children who cried, they did not want to board the train, they were afraid. (…) Then we came to some station, because the train did not yet go into Theresienstadt, it stopped a few kilometers away from the camp and we had to walk all the way to the camp (…) And then we arrived to the camp and we were ushered into a big hall with piles of straw in it - and there we were.”

Egon Gonda Redlich, Manager of the Education Department in Theresienstadt and a participant in the fateful decisions of the Jewish leadership, wrote a diary in Hebrew in the ghetto:

“June 5, 1942. (…) Young Women are arriving from Germany. Their husbands were jailed and they were sent here. (…)
June 6, 1942. Shabbat. (…) Women and children have arrived from Berlin. A terrible Appel was held with them. The entrance to the yard was closed off to us on threat of execution by shooting.”
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