Transport Dm from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 06/09/1943

This transport was announced in the Daily Orders issued by the Jewish Council on September 3, 1943. Each of the inmates then received written notice of their assignment to a “work transport”, ordering them to report on the day of the transport to the assembly site, the “Schleuse”, which was located at the Hamburg Barracks. They were allowed to bring a limited amount of luggage, usually one suitcase per person. According to eyewitness testimonies, some of the inmates who were selected for this transport were taken to quarantine on the spot, on a seemingly arbitrary basis. The inmates, who had received identification numbers upon their deportation to Theresienstadt, were now given new identification numbers. After they were counted, they were taken to the train platform in Theresienstadt, recently constructed by Jewish labour, where they were loaded into the waiting train. This transport, designated “Dm”, left Theresienstadt on September 6, 1943, and was one of first two transports to the Family Camp, the other being “Dl” which departed on the same day. On board were 2,528 men, women and children, most of them under the age of 60. It arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau two days later, on September 8. The trains from Theresienstadts to Auschwitz went north to Dresden, and then east to Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice). Upon the arrival of the transport in Auschwitz, the deportees were taken to the newly-built Family Camp. In the camp records, they were listed as being sent for “SB [Sonderbehandlung, ‘special treatment’, Nazi euphemism for murder] with 6-month quarantine”....