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.
Show more Commencing in January 1942, transports started to leave Theresienstadt for Riga. Later, some of the transports were sent to extermination camps and murder sites, including Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maly Trostenets.

In June 1942, the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office) embarked on mass deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria to Theresienstadt. The Jews sent there were mostly elderly (above the age of 65). They belonged to various groups consisting primarily of those who had earned high military decorations and citations during the First World War, people of international renown, and Jews who had formerly been married to non-Jewish spouses. Included in the last group were what the Nazis coined Mischling, that is, the offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish unions (a term literally meaning "crossbreed"). Essentially these were Germans deemed by the Nazi racist laws to be Jewish because they did not have full Aryan ancestry.

The Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung), headed by SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Alois Brunner, was responsible for conducting the deportation of Jews from Vienna. The first step was to send out orders to potential deportees indicating when they were to report at the assembly point. At the same time the local Jewish community instructed the deportees that they were allowed to take baggage and personal effects not in excess of 50 kilograms. Each deportee was allowed to take 100 Reichsmark on his/her person.
According to existing documentation, Jews deported to Theresienstadt during the summer-autumn of 1942, reported either to the assembly site at the Jewish school on Kleine Sperlgasse 2 or to Malzgasse 7/Miesbachgasse 8.
Transport No. 42 departed from Aspangbahnhof in Vienna (Wien) at 7:25 pm on September 24, 1942. The transport contained 1,300 Jewish deportees. It was the eleventh transport of deportees from Vienna to Theresienstadt and, because it contained a large percentage of elderly people, it was referred to as Alterstransport (old people’s transport). 673 deportees were older than 61, the average age of the deportees was 58 years. Among the deportees there was a significant number of Jewish community leaders (Prominenten), including the President of the Jewish Community, Desider Friedman and a former Member of Parliament, Robert Stricker. Lieutenant Alois Wolf and five armed policemen were responsible for guarding the Jewish deportees throughout the journey.
The guards had been ordered to report at noon at the station to which the deportees were taken. The train followed a route that passed through Vienna’s Nordbahnhof, Floridsdorf, Jedlersdorf, Stockerau, Absdorf-Hippersdorf, Gmuend, Tabor, Prague (Praha), and Bohusovice. On arrival at the station in Bohusovice, the Jews were forced to disembark from the train and walk about three kilometers to Theresienstadt, where the transport was noted in the ghetto records as IV/11; the Roman numeral IV representing Vienna
The following is an excerpt from the testimony of Joy Singer:
On the night of September 22, a Jewish man arrived at my apartment from the “Kripo” (criminal police force), in order to take me away […]. Despite my protests, I was taken to the assembly camp […]. SS personnel who confiscated our birth certificates and left us only with our identity cards after imprinting them with the stamp “Relocated to Theresienstadt”, joined the “Kripo men”, who guarded the transit camp. Before being taken away, all the women and men were forced to have their hair cut. The first trucks arrived at nine in the morning to collect us from the transit camp and the last ones arrived at 2:30 in the afternoon. We were forced to stand upright in the open trucks, while people in the crowded streets jeered at us as we were driven past. We were taken to Aspangbahnhof […] where we received the paper bag with our food for the journey. But there was nothing to drink. The SS men locked the doors and some of them traveled on the engine. The windows had to be kept closed and we were forbidden to look outside. Our transport, the eleventh from Vienna to Theresienstadt, departed at about five in the afternoon on Tuesday […] The train traveled all night. When I looked out of the window at ten thirty in the morning, despite being forbidden from doing so, I recognized Prague. We continued to travel at great speed and arrived in the afternoon at Bohusovice, where we had to alight. The transport consisted of old people and a medical team. On the station platform we were awaited by camp commandant Seidl, a number of SS men, and two or three members of the Czech gendarmerie […], whereas we were forced to walk to Theresienstadt.
The following is a further description of the transport, this time from the testimony of Munish Menashe Mautner:
On September 20 […] as usual the roundup [Aushebungen] of the [Jews] was carried out late at night […] when I was brought to the assembly point in the Second Quarter, the building was already packed full. I was taken to the second floor, where I was amazed to see in one of the corners, the family of Jewish Community President, Desider Friedman, as well as that of former Member of Parliament Robert Stricker. A little later Friedman and Stricker themselves arrived […]. In the room I also saw many professors from the Rothschild Hospital […]. When the order came to prepare for evacuation on September 24, each of us was forced to pass before the Gestapo with his or her backpack or suitcase. Something happened when Messrs. Friedman and Stricker donned their backpacks that even managed to leave an impression on the SS men; the youngsters in the transport started to sing Hatikva […] the SS man stopped what he was doing until the song was finished […] Professor Kestenbaum, a former high-school teacher […] came to me and said “Look, Mautner […] at Hitler’s sub-humans. Look at the courage, greatness that fills these youngsters, as they face deportation to the unknown […] even that SS man respects such fearless acts […].” We were then loaded onto trucks; to me – as a meat trader - this image of the evacuation resembled the transportation of beef to the abattoir in Vienna. The people of Vienna couldn’t care less what happened to the Jews. […]. We arrived in Theresienstadt the following day at about noon. As we alighted from the train, we already had the first dead […], who hadn’t survived the transport. We had to alight at the station in Bohusovice, since there was still no direct train to Theresienstadt […]. Our first picture of Theresienstadt was the cavalry camp where all the newcomers were spread out and their property underwent a general examination.
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