Transport I/26 from Berlin, Berlin (Berlin), City of Berlin, Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 20/07/1942

This transport departed from Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin on 20 July 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt in the early evening of the same day. The transport consisted of 100 Jews, of whom 68 were women and 32 were men. The average age of the deportees was 66.9. The youngest of them was a girl, barely three years old, and the oldest was a 91 year-old woman. Two of them were between the ages of 13 and 18, two of the deportees were between 19 and 45, six between 46 and 60, and eighty six of the deportees were between the ages of 61 and 85. Three of the deportees were over 85 years old. Among the deportees was also two and a half year-old Tana Austerlitz (b. 12 December 1939 in Berlin). She arrived in Theresienstadt with her mother, Hildegard Kasners and her brother Wolfgang. After two years in the ghetto, on 4 October 1944 Tana and her mother were deported to Auschwitz on transport En, together with 1500 other Jews. They were sent straight to the gas chambers and were murdered there. The brother Wolfgang had already been deported to Auschwitz on 28 September 1944 on transport Ek. Upon arrival of the train to Birkenau, a selection was conducted and Wolfgang together with some other Jews was transferred to the prisoners’ camp. From there, he was transported to Dachau concentration camp, to Flossenbürg concentration camp, and eventually to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Wolfgang Kasners did not survive the end of the war. The deportees were ordered to appear at the assembly camp in Grosse Hamburger Strasse or were taken from their homes by the Gestapo. A couple of Gestapo men, members of the Jewish desk, would usually show up, in order to round up the Jews destined for deportation. The Jews were requested to hand over the apartments in tidy form, after they had paid all taxes. The Gestapo men searched the deportees’ luggage, and the apartment, and often confiscated valuables. Subsequently they sealed the apartments. Jewish wardens who assisted the deportees in packing and carrying their belongings accompanied the Gestapo men. Trucks drove the Jews to the assembly site. This process usually took place one day prior to the actual deportation. At the assembly site the Jews were forced to sign a declaration, authorizing the transfer of their property to the state....