Transport Az from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to unstated place on 25/05/1942

The second transport (designated "Az") to Lublin carrying 1,000 Jews was the 14th transport from Theresienstadt to the East. It is documented in a Special Order of the day (No. 132), issued by the Jewish council of Theresienstadt on May 22, 1942, informing the ghetto population that there would be a new transport on May 25 "at the behest of the camp commander." As with the other transports, it was simply called "Ostentransport" (transport to the East) and the deportees were left in the dark regarding the final destination. The following Order of the Day (No. 133) reported the arrival of Transport "Aw" with 650 deportees from Iglau (Jihlava) on May 22. This transport had originally departed from Třebíč (Trebitsch) that same day. Unlike all prior orders, it was not specified that these deportees would be passed on to transport "Az". However, the deportation list includes many names from transport "Aw". Thus, the Jewish council upheld the practice of passing on most of the deportees from an incoming transport to an outgoing transport in order to spare the ghetto population from being deported. Additional passengers were informed until the early morning hours of May 25. As with all transports, the deportees from transport "Aw" spent the two days waiting for a new train in the quarantine site called "Schleuse" (floodgate). They did not come into contact with the rest of the Theresienstadt inmates. Gonda Redlich, deported to Theresienstadt in December 1941, and chosen by the ghetto elders to lead the youth welfare department was also in charge of selecting individuals for the transports. He noted succinctly in his diary on May 24: "Tomorrow, a transport goes East." Order No. 134 which was published on May 26 confirmed that transport "Az" would depart on May 25. According to Karel Lagus and Josef Polák in their book Mesto za Mrizemi (City Behind Bars) which is based on testimonies of survivors and on the research of the historians Tatiana Berenstein and Adam Rutkowski, transport "Az" went directly to Lublin. Upon their arrival on May 27 at the Central Railway Station, able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 55 were selected by the SS and Ukrainian auxiliary police. It is also recorded that the SS confiscated 933 watches and 398 rings. However, it is unknown how many men were selected for labor. These deportees were immediately brought to Majdanek in order to help expand the existing POW camp into a concentration and death camp. (Majdanek was originally known as a prisoner of war camp and was renamed "Lublin Concentration Camp" only after April 1943).The general plan to enlarge Majdanek for multiple purposes was authorized on 23rd March 1942. The first group of workers from Theresienstadt to help implement this plan arrived on April 30 with transport "Ar". Apparently, at the beginning of June 350 men from transport "Az" were still alive. An unknown number of them died in Majdanek. Others were further deported to forced labor camps such as Ujazdów. The Jews from transport "Az" who were not selected for labor were either shot in the Krepiec Forest 11 km from Lublin or deported to Sobibór. The gas chambers in Majdanek only began to operate in September. They also might have been brought to a transit ghetto on the way to Sobibór as was the case with transport "Ax". According to research by Berenstein and Rutkowski, the Nazis interned about 3,000 Jews from the Theresienstadt transports in April and May 1942 in Majdanek. According to a study authored by the Polish historian Zofia Leszczynska, even 5 trains from Theresienstadt carrying 1,000 Jews each reached Lublin between April 20 and May 27, either directly or after passing through several camps and ghettos within the Lublin district....