Transport IX/6 from Breslau, Breslau (Breslau), Silesia (Lower), Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 16/06/1943

Transport IX/6 departed from the Odertor train station on June 16 1943 and arrived at Theresienstadt on the same day. It was the sixth of 12 transports made up of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport included 18 Jews who were residents of Breslau. On this transport were the remaining members of the Jewish community administration including its chairman, Martin Pollack, the chairman of the Synagogue community Georg Kohn, and the senior staff of the Jewish hospital whose patients had been deported to Theresienstadt six days earlier. After the departure of this transport, the only Jews remaining in Breslau were those who were married to non-Jewish spouses. The Breslau residents who were on this transport were arrested and registered at their homes by uniformed police NSDAP and activists, and were then brought to the assembly site. Except for one, all of the deportees were living nearby. They were assembled in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse. There, they were questioned by officers from the Department 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. Afterwards, Gestapo officials escorted by NSDAP activists would conduct another search in the apartments of the deportees and then seal them off. On the day of the transport, the deportees were marched to the Odertor station and the police closed off the streets through which they passed. The luggage and those unable to march were brought by trucks, operated by a local moving business. They entered the station through a back entrance and were hurried into a 3rd class passenger car which was connected to a regular passenger train scheduled to depart in the morning. The exact time and date of the departure is unknown; the journey took 12 hours at the very least, and possibly longer. The train presumably went west to Dresden and from there to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz) via Decin (Tetschen) and Usti nad Labem (Aussig)....