Transport VI/8 from Hamburg, Hansestadt Hamburg (Hamburg), Hansa City of Hamburg, Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 23/06/1943

The eighth transport from Hamburg to Theresienstadt left the city on June 23, 1943. It consisted of 108 Jews. Some of these Jews had been residents of other cities (5 from Emden, 3 from Rostock, 2 from Walsrode, and 1 person from Jever, Oldenburg and from Stade) who were brought to Hamburg for their deportation. Several days prior to the transport, all the deportees were assembled in the buildings of the Jewish community in Beneckestrasse. Their luggage, which was limited to 50 kilograms, was searched at the assembly site. They were forced to provide an inventory of their property and to sign a document transferring all their remaining assets to the Reich. This transport included the last 30 employees of the local offices of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden, which was dissolved in the same month. For the remainder, until the end of the war, the staff of the Jewish administration consisted of Jews who were still exempt from deportation due to their status as spouses in so called "Mischehen" (mixed marriages). Out of these, the Gestapo used Dr. Martin Heinrich Corten, the head of the Jewish hospital, as the so-called "trustee" (Vertrauensmann) whose task was to administrate the remaining Jewish population in Hamburg. Corten was sent to accompany transport VI/8 as a tending physician with the intention of returning him to his new post in Hamburg. However, he was held by the SS in Theresienstadt until the Hamburg Gestapo intervened and pressed for his release. Among those listed for the transport was Leo Lippmann, council member and head of the financial office of the community administration. He had been an important member of his community and had repeatedly rejected offers for emigration. On June 10, 1943, Gestapo agents raided the community offices and informed him of his imminent deportation to Theresienstadt. The next night, Lippmann and his wife Anna Josephine committed suicide....