Until the beginning of 1943, 15000 Jews and people of Jewish ancestry (Geltungsjuden) who were engaged in forced labor deemed vital to the war effort in either Berlin factories or at institutions of the Jewish community were exempt from deportation.
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However, on 20 February 1943, the department of Jewish affairs at the RSHA headed by Eichmann, issued new regulations ordering the deportation of all forced laborers to Theresienstadt. According to the new policy, even Jews employed at factories crucial to the war effort were now eligible for deportation. Jewish spouses in mixed marriages and persons of Jewish ancestry (“Geltungsjuden”) who were not married to a Jewish spouse were still protected from deportations, even though this guideline was not rigidly followed.

On 27 February 1943, SS officers of the elite Leibstandarte squad, armed with whips and bayonets, raided the factories in the Berlin area and brutally arrested thousands of Jewish workers. The workers were taken by truck from their work places with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and were put into several assembly camps: Grosse Hamburger Strasse; Levetzowstrasse; the Clou Concert Hall; Mauerstrasse; the Herman-Göring barracks in Reinickendorf and the Jewish community building in Rosenstrasse. The Gestapo also arrested Jewish community workers, whose position was to be filled by the Jewish spouses of mixed marriages who at that time were still exempt from deportation.

While the SS officers were raiding the factories in the operation known as “Fabrikaktion”, the Berlin Police and the Gestapo conducted manhunts in the streets, homes, and shops of Berlin, searching for Jews wearing the madatory yellow badge. At the end of this large-scale operation, Berlin was cleared of Jews save for those who had gone into hiding, or Jews who were married to non-Jews and those with a non-Jewish parent.
The detainees did not remain in the assembly camps for long The Gestapo emptied these camps promptly, assembling one transport after another. Most of the detainees were deported to Auschwitz. A few were sent to Theresienstadt.

During the month of March 1943, the Gestapo launched only this single Transport from Berlin to Theresienstadt. This was the fourth and last large transport with nearly or over 1,000 persons from Berlin to Theresienstadt. Unlike the smaller transports, this one likely departed not from Anhalter Bahnhof, but from Berlin Moabit/Putlitzstrasse train station; however, one testimony places the site of the deportation at the Berlin-Grunewald train station. The transport departed on 17 March 1943 and arrived a day later in Theresienstadt. The train was ordered by the Gestapo and provided by Deutsche Reichsbahn.

The transport consisted of 1,342 Jews, of whom 663 were women and 620 were men. The average age of the deportees was 56. The youngest of them was an infant, less than a year old and the oldest was aged 92. Forty-five of the deportees were under 12, fifty-three of them were between the ages of 13 and 18, 155 of them were between 19 and 45, 446 were between 46 and 60, and 570 of the deportees were between the ages of 61 and 85. Fourteen of the deportees were over 85 years old.

According to historian Alfred Gottwaldt , the train consisted of 1164 Jews from Berlin. In addition there were also 20 Jews from East Prussia who had to leave Königsberg two days before, 33 Jews from Braunschweig and Hannover and 41 from Frankfurt/Main, who were deported to Berlin a day before, and four Jews from Leipzig. It has not been established whether a group of 22 Jews from Trier was also on board that specific transport.

The procedure of dispatching the transport was different from the smaller transports. As usual, the deportees received a simple meal prepared by Jewish community but they were brought from the assembly camps to the train station by trucks, where they had to wait for hours, from morning onwards until everyone had been registered and counted. This procedure lasted until the evening when the train finally left Berlin. They traveled all night long and arrived in Theresienstadt the next morning.

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 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/90 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 following months. Others were later transferred to extermination camps in the East, where they were murdered.

According to historian Rita Meyhöfer, 170 deportees from this transport are known to have survived.

This was the 90th of 123 transports from Berlin to Theresienstadt during the war that were made up mainly of elderly Jewish deportees (Alterstransporte).


Dr. Heinrich Wolffheim, who was deported two days earlier from Allenstein in Eastern Prussia to the assembly site in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, and from there was put on this transport to Theresienstadt, relates in his post-war memoirs:

"In Berlin, a larger transport was assembled – about 1354 people – and on 17.3.43, we traveled to the Bauschowitz station in cattle cars – in my car there were 52 people – with straw mattresses on the floor and a bucket to relieve ourselves in – the cars were locked throughout the whole journey, making it impossible for me, as one of the physicians on the transport, to provide medical attention on the way. From there, we walked about 2.5km to Theresienstadt… we were brought for two days to the “Schleuse” of the Aussig Barracks, and our luggage and persons were inspected most particularly. Although I protested and said that I was a physician, all of my instruments and medicines were taken away for me, and they were not given back to me even after I submitting a request with the Judenrat of Theresienstadt… after the inspection ended, we were sent to our quarters."
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