Transport, Train Da 76 from Luxembourg, Luxembourg to Bohusovice, Litomerice, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia on 26/07/1942

On May 5, 1942, the RSHA Jewish Affairs Department (IVB-4) sent out instructions signed by Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller concerning transports of Jews to the “elders’ ghetto” in Theresienstadt. Tenants of old-age ho mes were to receive the highest priority. The transport was also to include Jews aged sixty-five and over; those from the same age group who were in ill health as well as their family members; Jews who had “Aryan” spouses; Jews who had received first-order decorations in World War I; Jews who had been in “mixed marriages” that were no longer valid, unless they had children aged fourteen and below; Jews who had not been circumcised and had been baptized and defined under the Nuremberg laws as Grade 1 Mischlinge (“mixed breed”); and Mischlinge who were defined as Jews according to the Nuremberg laws. Those holding foreign citizenship other than that of Luxembourg or the former Poland, and those employed in the armaments industry were exempt from deportation for the time being. Deportations of Jews from Greater Germany to the Theresienstadt ghetto began in June 1942. Anti-Jewish laws had been introduced in occupied Luxembourg following the Nazi occupation in May 1940. In August 1941, the authorities began to concentrate the remaining Jews at the Fünfbrunnen collection point which had been a Jesuit monastery until 1938. In October 1941, a transport set out from this camp to the Łódź ghetto with more than 500 deportees aboard. On July 15, three days after a transport departed, Alfred Oppenheimer, head of the Ältestenrat der Juden (Jewish Council) in Luxembourg, announced that a transport headed for Theresienstadt was being planned:...