Transports from Theresienstadt to the East

Source: The Theresienstadt Centre for Genocide Studies

Jews from Theresienstadt are deported to death camps

From the beginning, Theresienstadt had a transit function – it was an assembly camp from which prisoners were deported to the ghettos and extermination camps in the East. The first such transport was publicly announced in the ghetto on 5 January 1942 (transport to Riga, today Latvia). The first thousand Jews from Theresienstadt were deported to Riga on 9 January. In 1942, the transports were mainly directed to Lublin, Izbica, Zamosc, and death camps in Maly Trostenets and Treblinka.

From the end of October 1942, transports from Theresienstadt were sent exclusively to the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first of these, code-named By, left on October 26, 1942, with 1,866 prisoners. At the end of January 1943, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in Theresienstadt. Apparently out of fear of the epidemic spreading, the SS command stopped the transports for the next eight months. During this period, a railway siding was completed from the main line in Bohušovice nad Ohří directly to the Main Fortress in Theresienstadt – to the area of today’s Dlouhá Street. This solution was intended to speed up the deportation process and prevent contact between the deported groups of Jews and the civilian population in the vicinity of the Theresienstadt fortress. In September 1943, transports to Auschwitz were again dispatched with unprecedented intensity. The last transport to Auschwitz, code-named Ev, left Theresienstadt on October 28, 1944. A total of 87,000 prisoners from the Theresienstadt ghetto were deported eastward to concentration and extermination camps. Only four thousand of them survived World War II.