Transport Bx from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Treblinka, Extermination Camp, Poland on 22/10/1942

The transport orders were handed to the camp commander, Siegfried Seidl from the Office for the Settlement of the Jewish Question in Prague. According to the monthly report for the month of September, submitted by the Jewish Council (Ältestenrat) to the camp commander, the camp commander ordered the Jewish Council to pass questionnaires among the elderly ghetto inhabitants, where they would indicate their age, profession, and possible Aryan ancestry. According to the testimony of Max Cohn, who participated in the registration process, all the elderly deportees were called to report at the offices of the Jewish administration at the Magdeburg barracks to fill out these questionnaires. The questionnaires were then handed over to the camp commander’s office, where a committee of an unknown composition summoned the elderly inmates once more, and based on their details prepared and finalized the transport lists, apparently preferring to send away the elderly, the sick and the infirm. As a general rule, inmates were put on transports together with their spouses and underage children. Since there has not been enough elderly Czech Jews in the ghetto to fill the required quota, younger relatives of the deportees were encouraged to volunteer to accompany them on this transport. This transport was announced in the Daily Orders issued by the Jewish leadership on October 19, 1942. Later that day, each inmate scheduled for transport was ordered to pack his or her belongings, report to the quarantine site (“Schleuse”) at the courtyard of the Aussig Barracks and wait there until the day of the transport. The inmates, who had received identification numbers upon their deportation to Theresienstadt, were now given new identification numbers, which they had to hang around their necks. During quarantine, the Jewish leadership was able to intermittently arrange for provisions and supplies. The transport, designated “Bx”, departed from Theresienstadt on October 22, 1942 and was the last in a series of eight transports of sick and elderly Jews (“Alterstransporte”). On board were 2,018 inmates of Theresienstadt. It arrived in Treblinka on October 24 or 25. The transport was composed almost entirely of Jews who had been previously deported from the Protectorate, among them 987 from Prague and 579 from Ostrava. Their average age was 61....