Following the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in March 1939, and the declaration of a Slovak republic on March 14, Hitler announced on March 15 the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Between 1939 and 1941 the Nazi authorities in the Protectorate carried out various anti-Jewish measures, which included the harassment of Jews and of Jewish institutions and the confiscation of property.
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On October 10, 1941, the newly appointed Reichsprotektor, Reinhard Heydrich, summoned several SS officers, among them Adolf Eichmann, to a meeting in Prague (Praha). Heydrich, who was also chief of the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA), revealed a plan to deport 5,000 Jews from the Protectorate to Eastern Europe and in addition to expel the remaining Jews of the Protectorate to an assembly camp in Bohemia. Theresienstadt, a garrison town built in the 18th century, located about 6 kilometers north of Prague, was chosen to serve as the place for concentrating the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia.
Mass deportations of Jews from Prague and soon afterwards from other large cities began in late November 1941.
In the provincial areas the registration of Jews began in January 1942.

On February 19, 1942, a month after the Wannsee conference, Adolf Eichmann summoned representatives of the Jewish religious congregation of Prague (along with those of Vienna and Berlin) to brief them on the forthcoming mass deportations from the “Greater Reich” to the East or to Theresienstadt.

Before the deportations of the Jews from the provinces began on March 27 1942, all Jewish religious congregations in the provinces were dissolved.

Transport Bl left Ostrava for the Theresienstadt Ghetto on September 25, 1942, at 23:00. It consisted of 860 Jews, mostly residents of Ostrava. The deportees were assembled on September 19 at a school building on Kopernikusgasse in Oderfurt (today Privoz), a neighborhood located near the local train station.

Prior to the train’s departure, several staff members of the Prague Jewish community Transports Department arrived in Ostrava to carry out administrative measures according to the orders that they received from the Central Office for Jewish Immigration. They prepared a list of deportees, registered Jewish property, issued notices regarding the date of deportation, and assisted in packing and carrying luggage.

The Jews were transferred from the school to the train station and put on a train. After it arrived in Bohusovice, the deportees had to disembark and were forced to march the remaining 3 km to Theresienstadt.


Excerpts from Yehuda Bakon’s testimony who, at age 13, was among the deportees:

"We knew there would be transports. Everyone tried to use his contacts in order to be in the last transport. Back then, three more days were very meaningful […] I remember that a truck that belonged to the Jewish community transferred us to the collection point […] Many people, among them our close neighbors, committed suicide before the deportations were carried out […] We were rounded up early in the morning and brought to the collection point. We slept there on the floor for two to three days. Our hair was shaved in the military manner. We all ate together in a large kitchen, and we had to hand over our keys to the SS men […] I think Wehrmacht soldiers escorted us to the train station. We all carried our luggage alone […] We were shouted at a lot but we were not beaten. In the morning, the city’s residents couldn’t see much, and those who were there watched us from a distance sorrowfully. We traveled in a regular passenger train, though it was crowded […] The journey lasted for more than a day. We stopped in Kolin, and were allowed to eat and drink. Subsequently, the journey to Theresienstadt continued. We got off the train in Bohusovice where men with tractors, presumably from the Ghetto, wearing strange looking caps and badges, awaited us. They loaded our luggage onto the tractors. We carried our hand luggage to Theresienstadt ourselves."
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