Transport Ea from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 16/05/1944

On the morning of May 13, 1944, the inmates chosen for this transport received written notice ordering them to report to the assembly site, the “Schleuse” located at the Hamburg Barracks, the next day. They were allowed to bring with them up to 50kg of luggage. 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, where they were loaded onto the waiting train. This transport, designated “Ea”, left Theresienstadt on May 16, 1944, and was the second of three transports that left Theresienstadt that month, prior to the inspection of Theresienstadt by the Red Cross delegation. On board were 2,500 men, women and children. Among the deportees was Ruth Klüger (born 30.10.1931) from Vienna, together with her mother Alma Klüger. The transport arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau the next day, on May 17. The trains from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz went north to Dresden, and then east to Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice). Unlike most incoming transports to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the inmates of this transport did not undergo selection, and none of them were murdered immediately upon arrival. Instead, they were ordered to surrender their luggage and were taken the so-called ‘Sauna’, where they were shaved and tattooed with prisoner numbers. They were then taken to a separate, fenced-off section of Birkenau which received the designation “Familienlager (Family Camp) B II b”, together with thousands of Theresienstadt inmates who had arrived there in September 1943. The exact purpose of the Family Camp has not been ascertained. Rudolf Höss, commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau, claimed before the Nuremberg tribunal in 1946 that the Family Camp was meant to quell the fears of the inmates remaining in Theresienstadt of the fate that awaited them in the East. However, evidence presented by historian Otto Dov Kulka suggests that the Family Camp was meant to be used as a façade to showcase fair treatment of the Jews to foreign delegations (including representatives of the Danish government and the International Red Cross) who might wish to inspect Auschwitz-Birkenau. Such was the case with the ongoing endeavour to use Theresienstadt as a convincing illusion of normalcy in order to mislead the Red Cross. In the Family Camp, which was the only place in Auschwitz were young children were allowed to live, the adults did their best to maintain a normal environment for them....