Transport IX/5 from Breslau, Breslau (Breslau), Silesia (Lower), Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 11/06/1943

Transport IX/5 departed from the Odertor train station on June 10 1943 and arrived at Theresienstadt on the next day. It was the fifth of 12 transports made up of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport consisted of 161 Jews who were residents of Breslau. Among the deportees were also the bed-ridden inmates of the Jewish hospital, which had been relocated twice since the beginning of the war and was now located at Wallstrasse. This time, the Nazis ordered its complete evacuation. Some of the medical staff joined the patients on this transport; the rest would follow several days later on transport IX/6. Another person on this transport was Max Kronheim, the 78 year-old Head of the Jewish community in Glogau. The residents of Breslau who were on this transport were arrested and registered at their homes by uniformed police NSDAP and activists and were then brought by trucks to the assembly site. If they were not found, a manhunt would be instigated. The deportees were assembled in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse. There, they were questioned by officers from the Departments of Jewish Affairs, representatives of the Regional Financial Office of Lower Silesia, legal clerks and officials from the District Government. They were forced to sign a declaration relinquishing their entire property to the State. They had to hand over the keys of their apartments to the clerks of the Regional Financial Office. Officers of the Criminal Police and the Gestapo conducted body searches and examined luggage for money and valuables which were confiscated upon discovery. Sometimes the deportees would undergo mock physical examinations by the Gestapo officers. Afterwards, Gestapo officials escorted by NSDAP activists would conduct another search in the apartments of the deportees and then seal them off....