Transport XII/2, Train Da 509 from Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt a. Main (Wiesbaden), Hesse-Nassau, Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 01/09/1942

The second large transport of elderly Jews from Frankfurt am Main set out on Tuesday, September 1, 1942, in a train numbered Da 509, and reached Theresienstadt on September 2. According to the existing documentation, it comprised 1,110 Jews — 588 from Frankfurt, 356 from Wiesbaden, and 165 from villages and towns in other districts including Obertaunus, Bidenkopf district, Dill district, Maintaunus district, Limburg, the Friedrichssegen camp in Lahnstein, Oberlahn District, Oberwesterwald District, and Wetzlar District. The deportation of Jews who lived outside Frankfurt was organized by local Gestapo offices. On August 27, 1942, the Gestapo office in Wiesbaden rounded up the Jews of the area and the vicinity and brought them to the synagogue on the Friedrichstraße. In the five days preceding the transport thirty Jews committed suicide. Before dawn on August 29, the remaining Jews were marched from the synagogue to the Wiesbaden main railroad station and placed aboard third-class cars on a passenger train en route to Frankfurt am Main. In Limburg, Gestapo members collected the Jews from their dwellings and drove them to the town hall or to the detention facility and from there to the railroad station. These Jews were placed aboard a train to Frankfurt am Main where they joined the transport destined for Theresienstadt. Much the same happened in Wetzlar. The main assembly point was set up at the old-age home of the Frankfurt Jewish community at 18–20 Rechneigrabenstraße, where the Jews from Frankfurt and the vicinity were ordered to report prior to their transport. Staff from the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (Reich Association of Jews in Germany) were charged with feeding the deportees, moving their luggage to the collection point, helping them with their asset-declarations, and so on. From the old-age home, the deportees were taken by truck to the eastern wing of the Grossmarkthalle, the Frankfurt wholesale market on the Hanauer Landstraße—a large industrial building dating from 1928. A railway track led from the eastern wing of the building directly to the Ostbahnhof, the eastern railroad station. The Gestapo led the Jews to Platform 40 from where the passenger train set out for Theresienstadt....