Transport IX/7 from Breslau, Breslau (Breslau), Silesia (Lower), Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 08/01/1944

Transport IX/7 departed from the Odertor train station on January 8 1944, and arrived at Theresienstadt the next day. It was the eighth of 12 transports consisting of elderly and otherwise privileged Jews from the province of Lower Silesia. The transport included 73 Jews, residents of Breslau and other towns and cities in the province. Prior to the assembly of the transport, the Head of the Department of Jewish Affairs sent notifications to the State Police Branches (“Aussendienststellen”) of the neighboring cities and towns, asking for certain individuals to be brought to the assembly site in Breslau. The residents of Breslau who were on this transport were arrested and registered at their homes by uniformed police and NSDAP activists, and were then brought by trucks to the assembly site. If they were not found, a manhunt would be instigated. The deportees were detained in the courtyard of the “Storch”, the old Orthodox Synagogue at Wallstrasse, where the offices of the New Jewish Association were located. 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....