Transport 63 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 28/03/1945

This transport, was originally listed as the 63rd to leave Berlin for the ghettos and killing sites in Eastern Europe, and was thus designated Osttransport 63. It departed on March 28, 1945. It included 25 deportees. Most transports leaving Berlin with the designation “Osttransport” have gone to Auschwitz, but this does not seem to be the case with this particular transport. On March 1945, the Gestapo sent a list with names of the deportees to the Financial Authority (Oberfinanzpräsident), as it did after every transport. However, for Osttransport 62, unlike most transports, two lists were sent: one with names of 12 male deportees, and one with names of 13 female deportees and an infant. The existence of separate lists according to gender would suggest that this transport, like the three "Osttransports" preceding it, was destined for the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück labor camps. However, in affidavits submitted in the 1950s and 1960s, survivors of this particular transport declare that they were deported instead to Theresienstadt, a ghetto near Prague that was used before mostly for a destination for deportation of elderly Jews and of Jewish spouses of non-Jews. These claims are backed by the data collected by the International Tracing Service. The deportees included in the later transports from Berlin to Auschwitz were typically Jewish spouses in so-called “mixed marriages” who lost their protection due to divorce or death of the non-Jewish spouse, or who were suspected of violating the anti-Jewish regulations. Another group of deportees consisted of Jews who lived illegally in hiding and were caught, often due to their denunciation by German civilians or Jewish collaborators. As the end of the war approached, the Germans began deporting the collaborators as well....