Transport from Koeln, Köln (Köln), Rhine Province, Germany to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 01/10/1944

According to the account by Zvi Asaria [published a series of books about Jewish history and the Holocaust], in mid-September 1944, Jews from mixed-marriages, their non-Jewish spouses and their children were ordered to move to the Cologne-Muengersdorf assembly camp. On Sepember 23, 1944 Gestapo fficer Hanke, accompanied by Gestapo officers Engels and Bittner, arrived at the assembly camp, read out a list of names and ordered those who were ill to step forward. Eight days later, on October 1 1944, most of those who had stepped forward together with all those on the list were shipped to Theresienstadt. According to the records from the trial against the Gestapo officers Kurt Matschke and Franz Sprinz in Cologne, a transport left to the city for Theresienstadt on October 1, 1944. This transport was not registered in the ghetto listings. Although the court records mention figures of between 90 to 200 men and 180 to 250 women, it consisted of up to 300 men and 280 women as Asaria claims. Among the deportees on this transport was the survivor Helene Neubrand who on September 30, 1944 had sent a postcard to her daughter and her granddaughter telling them she was to be sent to Theresienstadt the following day. Albert Kaufmann, born 1901 in Goettingen was also on this transport. On the journey he wrote two postcards to his wife and his daughter on October 2 and 3. Thanks to this documentation, we know that the train passed through Aschaffenburg, Wuerzburg, Eger and consisted of freight cars. Men and women were transported in separate wagons....