Transport Eh from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 01/07/1944

On July 1, 1944, a small transport of ten people, designated "Eh", left Theresienstadt for Auschwitz-Birnekau. There is little information regarding this transport. According to the diary of Willy Mahler, who worked for the transport department at the Jewish Administration (Ältestenrat), the transport orders and the transport list arrived directly from the Office for the Settlement of the Jewish Question in Prague (Zentralamt für die Regelung der Judenfrage. Seven of the people on this transport were deported at a relatively late date from Prague on transport "Ec" on May 17, 1944. The transport was probably conducted by means of a single railway car which was attached to a regular train at the Bohusovice (Bauschowitz) station, some 3km from the ghetto. The trains from Bohusovice to Auschwitz usually went north to Dresden, and then east to Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice). According to historian Danuta Czech, the transport arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on July 2. 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 leave their luggage behind 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 called the “Familienlager (Family Camp) B II b”, where they were interned with thousands of other 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....