Transport Dr from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 15/12/1943

This transport was announced in the Daily Orders issued by the Jewish Council on December 13, 1943, which stated that it would be going into Reich territory. On the same day, each of the inmates received written notice ordering them to report to the assembly site, the “Schleuse” located at the Hamburg Barracks, on the day of the transport. The notice stated that appeal was impossible. Aside for carry-on luggage, the inmates were allowed to bring one single bag or suitcase per person, which would be delivered separately to the train station. According to the ghetto diary of Eva Roubickova, some of the inmates who were selected for this transport were taken into 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 ones. After they were counted, they were taken to the Theresienstadt train platform, recently constructed by Jewish labourers, where they were loaded onto the waiting train. This transport, designated “Dr”, left Theresienstadt on December 15, 1943, and was the first of two transports that left Theresienstadt right before the temporary closure of the railway tracks in the winter of 1943. On board were 2,504 men, women and children, most of them under the age of 60. It arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau the next day, on December 16....