Transport Er from Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 16/10/1944

The transport orders were handed to the camp commander Karl Rahm by the Office for Settlement of the Jewish Question in Prague. According to Vilem Cantor, who was in charge of the transport registry in Theresienstadt, the commander passed the transport orders to the Jewish Council which was forced to comply. They included the date of the transport and the number of people to be transferred, as well as any special criteria. According to the testimony of Hanna Callmann and the diary of Pavel Weiner, these criteria included all members of the ghetto court of law as well as employees of the Jewish administration. According to the diary of Philipp Manes, sick and handicapped people were sent away as well. The orders also included the names of several other people who were to be included in the transport (Weisungen). The Jewish Council then held a meeting of up to 30-40 people who represented the different departments and nationality groups within the ghetto, and a list was finalized. The list also included a reserve amounting to 20% of the transport. If, for some reason, certain inmates could not join the transport others, whose names appeared on the reserve list, would be allocated in their stead. On October 12, a transport of 1,500 people left Theresienstadt. The next day, the people on the reserve who were summoned to the transport but not sent away were counted and ordered to report again for transport on October 14. On the morning of October 14, additional inmates received a summons, ordering them to report that night to the quarantine site (“Schleuse”) at the Hamburg Barracks. They were allowed to bring no more than 30kg in two pieces of hand luggage per person which couldcontain no tools or washbowls. Those who were unable to carry their own luggage were able to make use of porters provided by the Transport Department of the Jewish Council. During quarantine, the Jewish leadership was able to arrange for provisions and supplies, if only intermittently. On October 15, an urgent memorandum was sent to the house and block elders notifying them that boarding had begun. This transport, designated “Er” was the eighth to leave Theresienstadt for Auschwitz in this final wave of 11 such transports. It departed from Theresienstadt on October 16, 1944, and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on October 18. On board were 1,500 men, women and children. On the day of the transport, an empty train arrived at the camp via the adjoining tracks built by Jewish prisoners in the summer of 1943. The inmates were loaded into overcrowded railway cars. Historian Alfred Gottwaldt suggests that these latter transports from Thereseinstadt to Auschwitz were conducted using two trains of 25-30 freight cars each which went back and forth between the camps. Trains from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz usually went north to Dresden, and then east to Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice)....