Helena Fabera Praha XII. Na Šafránce 15.

Buchenwald, May 5, 1945.

The creation of the Theresienstadt ghetto and the living conditions in the same from December 1941, its beginning, until October 1944, the beginning of its liquidation.

It was in 1941, Hitler’s army had already been in Bohemia and Moravia for two years and the oppression of the population, especially the Jews, was increasing day by day. We heard in Prague that from Vienna, Moravian Ostrava and other cities large deportation transports of Jews were sent to Poland and were resettled there in so-called ghettos, where they lived crammed together and suffered from hunger and cold as well as a lack of hygiene and were cut off from the outside world. The news would not keep it quiet that a general deportation of all Jews was to be carried out bit by bit. In fact, it soon started in Prague, emigration files had to be filled out and all mobile and mobile property had to be handed over to the Nazi authorities. Then every 1000 people were gathered around every fourth day in the Prague exhibition centre, each of whom could bring luggage with a total weight of 50 kg, as well as bedding and had to leave all the rest of his belongings and furniture in the apartment and hand over the keys. There were 5 transports from Prague and 1 transport to Poland /Leda/ from Brno and the fear and confusion was a general one. Objects that had become worthless were quickly sold secretly /this was officially forbidden/ and on the other hand a number of objects recommended by the Jewish religious community in Prague were bought, so that in a short time all Prague shops selling these articles were sold out and everyone was preparing for the transport. Mainly these were suitcases, rucksacks, bread bags, warm clothes and laundry, high Canadian or ski boots, medicines, stoves, canteens, lamps, devices and tools and the like.

Officially, nothing was ever said about the place of arrival, so the wildest rumors were in circulation /including that the men would be separated from the women, that the baggage carts would be uncoupled and the like. / The transports were put together by the religious community on behalf of the SS and anyone who had no protection there was soon placed in such a transport. Particularly wealthy people or people who were particularly unpopular with the Nazis were classified individually or by family according to special instructions.

This is how my family came to fill out the file after some of my dearest friends had already been deported. On November 27, 1941, with a heavy heart, I had to equip my poor old mother because she had received the transport order without my volunteer report being taken into account and she moved into the exhibition centre. On December 1st this transport left for an unknown destination, but immediately afterwards the news spread that a ghetto would be established in Bohemia and that this transport that had just departed was already going to this ghetto. Theresienstadt as construction commando I from there to make the facilities and preparations. A second construction commando transport of 1000 men was also to be assembled and the religious community and the SS promised those who took part in this transport that they would have a preferred position as assembly workers in Theresienstadt and that their wives would be sent along as soon as possible. I then signed up to be close to my mother again. I moved into the exhibition grounds on December 1, 1941, and my wife accompanied me to the place where we said goodbye with a heavy heart. The suitcases were put in a magazine and were to be transported separately. I also had a rucksack, 1 bread bag and

1 bed roll. We were crammed together in the cold and dirty rooms, some lay on the floor, some on old, greasy mattresses or on wooden beds. In the course of 3 days we had to sign all possible declarations of surrender and waiver for movable and immovable property, papers, insurances, claims etc. and were asked to deliver all personal documents, money, cigarettes, tobacco, medicines, spirits. These objects piled up to form small mountains on the tables, and yet there were many people who did not give up everything or gave up nothing and cheated their way through. Some were caught doing this and severely slapped by the SS-Scharführer Fiedler and Burger.

All transport work (manual and administrative) had to be carried out by the Jews themselves, who had strict instructions from the SS. Sometimes Jews from the administration, especially Mr. Mandler, excelled very ingloriously in the fact that he - more papal than the Pope - even made the orders stricter and very often beat his fellow sufferers himself. I remember very well his shiny leather coat and his domineering flailing with a huge daimon focus wide beam lamp. /This gentleman later came to the ghetto and was duly rewarded with heavy blows and slaps in the face immediately after arrival so that he did not dare to go out into the street, but by order of the SS he was declared a prominent figure and then held a high position./

On the second day the hairs of our heads were shaved off and since it had just gotten very cold, we all froze pitifully, as we had to walk around with our heads uncovered all the time. Finally, on December 4th, we were brought to the Bubny train station at 7 a.m. under protective police guard and were put in a car. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon we arrived in Bauschowitz, where a working group of our friends from assembly commando I, who had been sent ahead, was waiting for us to arrange the luggage transport. We then walked 4 km to Theresienstadt, where we were quartered in the Sudeten Barracks, which had been abandoned by soldiers. The people from the first transport were standing in the courtyard of this barracks and there - then I saw my 1. mother, who was very happy to have me here. We were assigned huge halls with concrete floors on the top floor for about 300-400 people each and were occupied with mattresses. The previous mixed transport lived on the lower floor in smaller rooms with wooden floors for around 25-40 people each. A mixed transport from Brno of 1,000 people that arrived on the same day was also quartered in one of the uppermost halls. Everyone was busy with feeding themselves as well as possible from the food they had brought with them, because the food that was initially provided was very poor. The kitchen was not yet well organized, the barracks kettles were not enough for the 3340 people and the potato peeling went very slowly, so we all had to help.

4 washrooms, with around 100 taps, and 4 toilets with around 20 cubicles were available, and of course we always had to queue to attend to our needs or to get lunch, which was very uncomfortable with the prevailing strong frost.

Considering that further transports had been announced, the women were then moved to another barracks /Dresdner/. Then the news spread that a separate transport of 25 prominent people from the Prague religious community had arrived, from which the so-called Council of Elders and, with the assistance of other capable people, the staff to support it should be formed. This institution, which was supposed to represent a kind of small government of the Jews in Theresienstadt, was entrusted by the SS with the autonomous administration of the ghetto. This Council of Elders

included: Jakob Edelstein with the title Judenältester, Engineer Zucker, Dr. Munk, Dr. Egon Popper, Schliesser, Fredy Hirsch, Klaber, Freiberger and others, and was divided into individual departments such as the Central Secretariat, Internal Administration, Security, Health, Youth Welfare, Economic Department, Work Center, Production, etc. Of course, all of these departments were created gradually and were subject to many changes, as did the service they provided as a result of the heavy responsibility that often seemed intolerable, and their bosses often changed as a result of the continuing fluctuation caused by transports.

Since my mother moved to the Dresdner barracks with the other women, I was separated from her again. The barracks were guarded by Czech gendarmes who had their guard rooms at the exit gates. You could only leave the barracks with a special pass. Such passes were given to people from the Council of Elders, the staff, craftsmen or people who had to do any work outside the barracks on orders, or to closed work columns who marched off militarily and passed numerically on a collective pass with which the column leader identified himself. Since I was not yet on the job, there was no way I could get to Mother. I tried to be included in one of the work columns that went to the Dresdner barracks, but in vain. At least I managed to get written messages over from time to time.

Two weeks passed and further transports from Prague arrived in Theresienstadt. Each transport was labeled alphabetically and consisted of 1,000 people of mixed ages and genders. Only the two construction commando transports, which consisted only of men and whose members had a privileged position in the ghetto for a long time, retained the transport designations AK I and AK II. Many of our wives arrived with another transport, and we saw they pass by from the windows of our barracks. My wife Mana also arrived with some friends in mid-December and sent me a letter about her invitations. Since the barracks that had been open so far were not enough, another one, the so-called Hohenelber barracks, was vacated; the Bodenbacher, Magdeburger, Hamburger and Hanover barracks could later be opened, the Kavalier barracks became an old people's home, hospital was established in the Hohenelber, and the Magdeburg barracks were made available exclusively to the people of the Council of Elders and staff with their families, where they gradually made themselves comfortable. For a long time, the Aussiger and Jäger barracks were schleusse barracks where incoming transports were received and outgoing shipments were dispatched.

For me the problem of getting to my wife and mother had become a burning problem and finally, on the advice of some friends, I joined the so-called Transporthunderschaft, which the two youth leaders from the retraining camp Linden Erwin Mautner and Franz Peschau led. They kept the group together in military discipline and organized the heavy transport work. In this way I had the opportunity to get out of our barracks in a closed working group and to get into the women’s barracks and talk to mother and wife almost every day, which lifted my initially depressed mood a little. My wife had also brought some groceries with her and cooked dumplings, semolina porridge, and noodles on the primitive cooker she had brought with her, and we ate together, which meant that the very slim rations, which only consisted of bread, potatoes, water soup, a little margarine and every 10-14 days something like 5 dk meat

or salami was slightly improved. Often we worked days and nights /15-20 hours/ handling the incoming transports before we had anything to eat, as the Prague and Brno residents had meanwhile learned from illegal messages that the luggage was not being taken away, but was being handled correctly and as a result many transport participants did not bring 50 kg, but 500-600 kg / I remember seeing people who took 11, 16 and even 20 suitcases with them / This of course dragged out the unloading work and distributing it to the recipients. Because the everyman newcomer, who we worked for for days and nights, saw that there was not much food provided here, and eventually everyone was just happy to get their suitcase and backpack out of the tens of thousands of pieces of luggage, the nice custom arose to reward us with the food that had been brought along, which of course was very welcome. All the more so since the efforts of our Hunderschaftsführer to get a little more food for our hard work were not taken into account by the administration for a long time.

So came the first Christmas and New Years, which we tried to celebrate with more or less humor despite the uncomfortable situation in which we were. The men had more success because musical instruments had also been passed around and music was often played in the halls or rooms of the men’s barracks. All barracks, as well as all objects outside, were guarded by gendarmes to prevent any contact with the civilian population. This did not always succeed, and quite a number of people on the various work details, such as the railway and the like, smuggled in food, money, and tobacco. The risk was great and the prices on the black market were correspondingly high. A loaf of bread cost K 80 to 100. Cigarettes rose from K 4.50 to K 8, later to 12, 15, 25 - at which level they stayed for a long time and then rose even further. The gendarmes behaved relatively decently, when one got to know individuals better some helped with smuggling and the like. Only a few, including the commander Oberleutnant Janeček, and the sergeants Sykora, Drahonovsky, Simandl and others, who were anti-Semitic or were in thrall to the Nazis, went very hard and arrested many of our people for violations and handed them over to the German authorities. The Small Fortress /a temporary concentration camp near Theresienstadt/ was the order of the day. To give a frightening example, one day SS Obersturmbannführer Bergel and the camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Seidl hanged 9 and then 7 young men because of violations / unauthorized traffic with civilians, smuggling groceries to Th., possession of money or cigarettes, shopping in Ther. business, sending or receiving black letters etc. / on a gallows in front of the entire Council of Elders. The execution had to be carried out by a Jew, the notorious former butcher Fischer, who later also acquired a bad reputation for badly treating his fellow sufferers. In order to maintain peace and order in the ghetto, the security system was created and placed under the direction of Messrs. Klaber, Kominik and Komita. When a story with money or cigarettes was discovered, Klaber was deposed and imprisoned for 6 months. His successor was Löwenstein, the former police chief of the Minsk ghetto, who was also imprisoned in the Small Fortress. He later had an affair and was locked up. His deputy was the commander of the ghetto guard Frey. He did not officiate for long and then a former Reich German police judge named Rosenthal came to the helm, who held up until the time of my departure and was quite popular and truly served justice to the best of his ability. The SS, too, never objected to his administration.

The security system had 2 departments, namely the ghetto guard - a kind of city police, which was responsible for guarding the barracks and Jewish objects together with the Czech gendarmes and whose uniform consisted of a belt and a black cap with high edges and a yellow stripe. Both were worn with the other civilian clothes and looked a little strange, but we soon got used to them. The second department was the Kripo or Kriminalwache - which was responsible for the uncovering of thefts and other offenses or crimes as well as contraband violations - to circumvent regulations in favor of fellow sufferers with mildness, but there were also some individuals who - more papal than the Pope - insisted on an unnecessary harshness and for the most part for fear of inconveniencing themselves, reported many of their fellow sufferers and brought down severe punishment by the superior authorities /the Nazi SS/ if it was not possible to handle the individual cases by either carrying out the sentences or covering up the cases internally, within the framework of the Jewish self-government security system.

In the meantime we had got used to this strange life a little and I always met my wife and mother in the Dresdner barracks. My wife sometimes worked in the so-called cleaning crew, whose work included washing floors and corridors in the men’s barracks so that she could also get to me in the barracks, or we met while the unloading potatoes in the protective walls, where the big potato stores were, or in barracks cellars, where they were stored.

More transports came. If at the beginning pieces of luggage were handed over to the transport participants without further ado, a drastic change took place at that time. As already said, after receiving black messages that everything was going perfectly in Theresienstadt, the transport participants brought more and more luggage with them, so that one day the Nazis left three quarters of the total amount of luggage at the departure station, as they didn’t want to make any more wagons available. Later, becoming wiser from the bad experiences of others, transport participants adhered to the prescribed 50 kg. Second, an examination of all persons and all luggage for contraband was now carried out on behalf of the Nazis, i.e. to articles whose possession or use we Jews were forbidden according to Nazis regulations, that is to say money, valuables of all kinds, tobacco, cigarettes, smoking accessories, matches, pipes, instruments of all kinds, chemicals of all kinds, medicines /some of which, however, were delivered to the hospital/ hard alcohol, stoves of all kinds, in particular electric stoves, cords and contacts, all kinds of rubber goods such as tubes, thermophores, enemas, preservatives, thermo bottles, cosmetic preparations of all kinds, such as soaps, creams, toothpaste, powder, Odol, toothbrushes, candles, food in perfectly preserved condition, especially tin cans, as well as whole salamis. These goods were confiscated from the luggage by the gendarmes, to whom Jewish ghetto guards had to provide manual assistance, and criminal police guards had to monitor the proceedings. However, most of the gendarmes were very benevolent and often left half of the transport unchecked, and in the baggage they searched they left half of the objects to be confiscated either from insufficient knowledge or out of benevolent convenience. They almost always took away only cigarettes, spirits, etc., because they themselves were the intended beneficiaries and since they only committed this little theft in the eyes of the Jews /ghetto guards and Kripo/ instead of delivering the goods,

they wanted to do something in return for the Jews, so they otherwise handled the investigation of the other contraband items benevolently. With the intercession of the ghetto guards, it was even often possible to get objects that had already been confiscated from friends and relatives.

The searches took place in the so-called Shleusskaserne, where the transports were schleussed, those of the Kavalier barracks, an old, elongated, low structure with rooms that resembled crypts and in which a huge old people’s home for about 2000-2300 people was later set up. who slept in double beds on top of each other. Later the Hamburg barracks became the Shleusskaserne. The confiscated contraband was carried by ghetto guards - later by members of the Transporthundertschaft - under guard by the gendarmerie to their /the gendarmes/ barracks. On the way there, objects of the confiscated goods were often stolen by the gendarmes or ghetto guards by mutual agreement, which was not immoral after all, since this formerly Jewish property had become Nazis property after the confiscation and by passing it on the Nazis robbery got smaller. Apart from that, the gendarmes were thus made more friendly towards the Jews and carried out their duties with less severity. Over time almost every gendarme stood with a larger number of ghetto guards - or later in business relationships with members of the Transporthundertschaft, and these business relationships were then used again to make the gendarmerie docile and benevolent when smuggling money, food and the like from outside into the ghetto.

With a transport of 1000 people, depending on the mood, the gendarmes confiscated about 5 - 6 100 kg boxes of contraband, which, viewed from the right perspective, was actually not much, as one transport sometimes contained up to 200,000 kg of luggage.

One day the Nazis ordered a further tightening and from now on all suitcases from the transport participants were confiscated and stored in the Aussiger barracks. There they were then gradually opened, all their contents sorted out and stored in the so-called closet. There were special departments for clothes, underwear, shoes and all those things that were not contraband. The contraband was taken away, most of the medicines ended up in the Jewish central pharmacy, the food, if it was not ready for use, was put in the central provisions for consumption in the ghetto, but if it was ready for use, it was taken by everyone who had anything to do with it /gendarmes, ghetto guard, Kripo, Transporthundertschaft, staff of the closet, staff of the central provisions, people from the Council of Elders, etc./ stolen so that nothing was left for the community. Leather things, brushes, cosm. Objects, household appliances, etc. were placed in the haberdashery department, tools were made available to the tool distribution center.

If relatives or acquaintances succeeded in rescuing items of luggage intact, this was a major hit and the owners were always grateful for this. A large number of people were employed in the dressing room who sorted the individual departments and were searched every day after work by the gendarmerie and Kripo to see whether they had hidden items from them. Of course there was a lot of noise, arrests and staff changes.

Half a year later, the SS gave orders that all non-Jewish residents of Theresienstadt / that is, the civilian population / of the city must evacuate; this evacuation was carried out within a month and the whole city was now handed over to Jewish self-government, as the number of ghetto inmates had increased enormously due to the large contribution of further transports and they were now also housed in the houses of the city. With this, the exit ban for the barracks fell and we were now free to move around the city, of course only until curfew, which differed in the individual seasons, first until 6, later until 8 and in summer until 9 and even until 10 in the evening. At 10 o'clock all light had to be turned off. The barracks were now guarded by the ghetto guard. Inmates who were able to leave the barracks or who came home after curfew were checked by the ghetto guard for their pass.

About two months after the arrival of the first Jewish people in Theresienstadt, we were hit by a hard blow. We had all thought that Theresienstadt would be a permanent stay for us, but unfortunately we were taught better. The Nazis suddenly ordered that transports to Poland had to leave. There was again a lot of misery and suffering, hard work with the luggage, a lot of which was then left behind and sorted out in the dressing room. Many relatives who had just met in Th. were again torn apart, parents from children, brothers from sisters, etc. Only married couples with underage children stayed together. We as members of the Ak - Transport were protected for a long time because we had contributed most to the construction of the ghetto. The number of Gh. inmates fluctuated colossally, at first it grew to 7,000, then fell again to 5,000, then rose again to over 60,000 despite simultaneous outgoing transports in July - August 1942 to over 60,000 and then slowly fell again. The first transports that left Th., were unofficially rumored to be going to Riga /later turned out to be correct./ Further transports went to Lodz, and more allegedly to Izbica by Lublin, others to Minsk, but we could never find out anything more precise. My own later experiences led one to speculate with a fair degree of certainty that the vast majority of these people perished in the Polish ghettos or later in extermination concentration camps. We always observed that the SS treated people ruthlessly in order to clear the transports on time and that large amounts of luggage were always left behind. When 4 transports of 2,000 old people had to leave Theresienstadt in the autumn of 1942, 60 of them were crammed into a truck, one on top of the other, and thus brought to the train station, where they were again crammed tightly into cattle cars. The work of stuffing into the trucks and wagons was done by the ingloriously well-known executioner Fischer, as well as the nurse Rene Jellinek, both of whom were so ruthless and brutal that they were extremely favored by the SS - Nazis Seidel, Bergel, Klausen 1Note 1: Claussen Otto etc. acquired / Rene Jellinek was at the same time the mistress of the Hauptscharführer Otto and the driver Poljak, Otto Later on, the Kripo officer Susa Braun and other people were also involved./I myself saw lower SS charges like the driver Poljak brutally beat old people who could not sit in the truck from the outside with blows of the cane so that they fell over their fellow sufferers in the truck. I also saw SS - Hauptscharführer Klausen 1Note 1: Claussen in the Aussiger barracks with old men and women who did not want to part with at least their smallest piece of luggage when getting into the trucks, tear this rucksack or bag from their hand and get rid of them so that these transports of old people had almost nothing with them. He also kicked them in the buttocks so that they fell to the ground. At that time I was horrified by the brutality of taking everything away from people, today I know that the SS led these old people to their immediate extermination on arrival in an

extermination concentration camp and therefore thought whether the people were already losing everything here or at the place of arrival did not matter, they did not need it, because they either died on the long journey /3-4 days of exhausting driving/ or immediately after arriving at their destination found "humane" mass deaths in a gas and fire oven. Other people who had either made themselves unpopular with the Jewish authorities or the imprisoned bad guys were also placed on such transports. Very often sick people were taken away with them, once even around 1000 insane people. Bringing these old and sick people together, most of whom lay in some attic, was already torture. They were often literally lying in their own droppings, dressed in stinking clothes, lying one on top of the other in the dark or on the cold tiles of the attic and us they had to be driven to the schleusse barracks on the only wagons available to us, namely old Jewish funeral cars. Many were already dying and were loaded while already dead in order to be able to spare other living people. When the majority of the unprotected Jews from Prague and Brno had been ghettoized, the other districts of the Protectorate had their turn, such as Pilsen, Budweis, Kladno, Königgrätz, Pardubice, Iglau, Olmütz, Ostrau, Moravian Slovakia, Jungbunzlau and so on, and in between those came transports from Cologne am Rhein, Hamburg, Vienna, Berlin, Rheinland, Westfalen, Königsberg, Munich, Kassel, and later from Holland and Denmark arrived. These were a bunch of older people who were previously housed in old people's homes, while their younger family members were transported directly to Poland. These old and sick Reich Germans arrived in Th. in a desperate state, with little luggage, more dead than alive from the journey /pressed together in cattle wagons/, mostly in clothes stinking with feces and urine, as they had not been let out of the wagons for 3-4 days, and mostly lousy. The louse situation became so out of hand that the medical personnel were no longer sufficient to carry out the delousing and a special lice station was set up in the Jäger barracks, a long, low building. As far as the seriously lousy old sick people still had a chance at survival, they were bathed there several times and changed into fresh towels and bedclothes. /However, most of them also suffered from dysentery or at least enteritis and the beds were usually terribly soiled again/. As far as the people showed little life energy, however, they were no longer deloused and I saw a large number of dead people being carried away from this house of misery every day, covered over and over with lice that just left the dead body in large numbers. These people's blankets and pillows were burned. For the sake of interest, when I was carrying out the ambulance service for the deloused people, I counted about 3000 living teeming lice on a red pillow 40x40 cm. However, the combined efforts of the doctors and the nursing staff succeeded in mastering the lice and the associated typhus danger.

The increasing density of the ghetto population turned the housing issue into a burning acute problem. The SS ordered that wooden beds with 3 floors be placed in all available rooms, with 2 floors in lower rooms. In the so-called building yard, where the old workshops with old tools and machines were put back into operation at the behest of the SS and where there was a forge, locksmiths, plumbing, wagons, wagons, carpenters, painters, glaziers etc. The craftsmen had it pretty good, since everyone worked on their own specialty and ate more food and also earned a lot of food or cigarettes by doing various unauthorized private work. A large carpentry shop was in this building yard, which was entrusted with the construction of beds and whose capacity was greatly increased. For this purpose, huge amounts of wood were brought to Theresienstadt via Bauschowitz.

However, later not only beds, but also chairs, benches, tables and wardrobes for the wealthy and prominent were made, including reversible boards for the women's barracks so that women could store their small items on them. The women's rooms always looked nicer as they attached colorful cloths, blankets, throws, etc. to the walls and boards and gave the rooms a warm impression.

With the large number of old and sick people, it was very natural that the need for doctors and nurses was very great and the self-sacrificing work of these people was one of the brightest points in the ghetto. If it has to be said that some doctors and nurses treated their patients somewhat harshly, it may have been due to impatience and overwork. The hospital staff were relatively well-supplied with food, as they also had food for the sick and a large number of these patients were unable to eat and as a result a lot of food was left over, which the nursing staff divided up. In the Hohenelber barracks, as well as in the rest of the hospital block, first-class outpatient clinics with good instruments, operating theaters and apparatus were set up, and bacteriological test cases were sent out. There were also a fair number of good x-ray machines from the private practices of the doctors in question. The Nazis also made personal use of the doctors in many cases, visited the facilities and were cured. /Sturmbannführer Bergel regularly visited Lecturer Stein at the eye clinic, a few times secret births or abortions were carried out for Nazi women under orders in Jewish clinics/.

One day in April 1942 the order came that 1,000 women were to be sent to the Pürglitzer forests to work in the woods. This aroused mixed feelings, many single women pushed for it, believing that such a healthy workplace outside of the ghetto would be good for them, while others feared a renewed separation from their husbands or other relatives. Ultimately, however, a speech by Edelstein, who had news from the SS, tipped the scales and said that no woman had to be afraid; that the work consisted of reforestation or planting of young trees in the burned-out Pürglitz forest district, the accommodation was in groups in village inns, the security only foresters, the food was good and plentiful, fresh air, the prospect of writing to the ghetto, so that the women finally found themselves there with a lighter heart. My wife Manicka also went with them and she did well, the stay in the fresh air and beautiful surroundings had done her quite good, she came back really rested and said this would have been one of the best summer stays. Nevertheless, we were extremely worried about her for the entire 2 months. I still remember the beautiful sunny day when the women came back from the Bauschowitz train station, each with a large bouquet of wildflowers in their hands, radiant faces, tanned and of course we just flew into each other's arms after this time of separation. From there she had also written to Prague and had often received replies and parcels from relatives too, as well as K 5000.- from my former boss on account of my credit with him, yes, her cousin Karl even came to visit her and talked to her there in the forest and brought food in his suitcase. Some smaller male labor transports had also left in the meantime, 300 men to Kladno, 100 to Oslavan and then more to Kladno. They all had it pretty well made and were given all the necessary support from the non-Jewish workers they came into contact with on these detachments /food, money, cigarettes, etc./ They also had the opportunity to write home secretly.

After her return my wife moved with others in the Hamburg women's barracks, which like the Dresden was now transformed into an old people’s home. She came into a large attic with 24 companions, where it was a little cold, but where there were lots of capable women, there was always cooking and people tried to be funny. There were now also official amusements under the name of Freizeitgestaltung, free time activities, and tolerated by the SS, music and even dance with a jazz band, lectures of a scientific, fiction and biographical nature, revues based on Voskovec and Werich and the like. The like. Well-known comedians and virtuosos performed and even some operas and plays were performed, which became a lasting introduction. All leisure evenings were always full.

The Hundertschaften were used for all kinds of work, such as sewerage, garbage disposal, unloading potatoes and coal, moving machines and furniture, and leveling work. In the summer of 1942, the swim school had to be prepared for the SS. The sports fields were repaired, wells were drilled, pipes were dug, graves were dug up, the crematorium was built, and we were often sent to the small fortress to do field and gardening work there under the supervision of the SS, whereby the notorious Alfred and yet another SS man slapped the ears terribly and beat them bloody with a club. Often we were also sent to the farm building behind the town, where there was a large barn, and there we stacked heavy peat and hay bales up to a height of 20 meters. An administrator named Brichta, who supervised us, was also guilty of inhuman behavior. One day a particularly large work force of several hundred men was formed and started building a branch line from the Bauschowitz train station to Theresienstadt on behalf of the SS. We thought that the war would be over before this was finished, but the railway, which made a wide bend, was finished within a few months and the trains now drove to Th., where the tracks branched, one behind the Hamburg barracks, and the other ended in front of the Jäger barracks. Now material and people transports could be loaded into the city, which at least spared the people a great deal of stress, but on the other hand an intensification of the transports was the result, because in the past 1000 people had always come or gone, whereas now within 10 days / in 3-day intervals 7500 people were away at once.

Already in winter the close coexistence in the houses and barracks had revealed a large number of vermin, mainly fleas and bedbugs, the fleas became a real nuisance in summer, one often did not sleep at all all night and scratched oneself incessantly. I sometimes caught 30-50 fleas in one night and all of the sheets were covered with the bloody excrement of the fleas. The wooden beds and the boards behind them housed entire breeding grounds for bedbugs and we were completely powerless against it. Burning out and dismantling the beds did not help. When the management intervened, the Nazis finally sent disinfectants and the barracks and blocks were subjected to a thorough disinfection one after the other, which although it never completely eradicated the vermin, as the same was always brought in again, at least brought a great relief. All the inmates of a block or part of the barracks were evacuated for 4-5 days, all doors and windows and other openings were carefully glued over with paper, and cyclone or vontox gas was let in, which went through all clothes, suitcases and beds, killing all vermin. After a few days the inmates came back, everything was opened, aired and we had a few weeks of rest until new vermin were brought in from elsewhere.

With the growth of the ghetto population due to continuously arriving transports from all parts of the Reich and Austria, as well as the departure of a large number of so-called Protectorate members to Poland, the Reich German inmates had become numerically overrepresented and demanded that this also be expressed in the leadership as well as in all offices and companies. In the so-called nutritious businesses, i.e. kitchen, provisions, etc. in particular, only German Reich members were now accepted. As Jewish elder, Dr. Paul Israel Eppstein from Berlin was appointed and the former Jewish elder Jakob Edelstein became his deputy. Another position in the Council of Elders was given to the disreputable Dr. Murmelstein from Vienna. Edelstein was later accused by the SS of not keeping things in order because some people had run away and this incident had been covered up and concealed by the evidence management. Edelstein was locked up and sent away on a later transport. The same fate befell Dr. Eppstein, because in October, when it was announced in October 1944, that the new transports to Auschwitz were going to be exterminated and he was told to keep silent about it, to which he did not agree, he was locked up and nobody heard from him anymore, whereupon Dr. Murmelstein took over the management, whose mentality did not impose any mental inhibitions on him when he kept silent about the transport regulations.

All handicraft businesses were grouped together in a special department called Production, which meant both production for the consumption of the ghetto inmates and for purposes. The cabinet-making department set up entire rooms in the SS headquarters and the comradeship home, and first-class Jewish artists were entrusted with decorating the interior. Some establishments served directly for commercial sales purposes, e.g. the workshops H. Lautsch, which were set up in a command center building. There, lampshades, cassettes, bookmarks, book covers, congratulation cards, wall pictures, oil and watercolor paintings, as well as associated frames, sculptures, pottery and ceramic work, were completed, dispatched and paid for, which was very good for the ghetto. A large workshop for mica columns was set up. /The mica came to Th. in large pieces in boxes and was split into thin plates by the hand of women, packed and sent back. These mica plates are used in the electrical industry for insulation purposes./ A large cardboard workshop and a small factory for children's building toys and picture books were built which also employed many men and women. In a leather goods workshop, purses, wallets, tobacco, neck pouches, etc. were made in large quantities from synthetic material. Finally one day a large war production workshop was set up on the large market place, the so-called K - /boxes/ production. 3 huge tents, each 100 m long, were set up on iron scaffolding, infinite quantities of special boards came in, from which boxes of a standard size were put together, and various small components that arrived were put together and packed into the boxes. These were devices to prevent the freezing of motor truck engines. This production lasted through the winter of 1943 and through that time, 1,000,000 boxes were filled. Then the tents were broken down again and the market place was cleared. Since a lot of money and food, as well as cigarettes were bagged in the Lautsch workshops, and even Germans were involved, one day most of the workshops were closed. Only the jewelry department remained.

All the land around Theresienstadt, as well as on and between the ramparts, which are known to be arranged in the form of a 12-pointed

star, were built on and a special agricultural department had the task of sowing, mowing, planting, watering, clearing and fertilizing. This group had a lot of work - a large number of men and women were busy doing it - but it was healthy work and profitable in that they were allowed to eat whatever they could eat on the spot from the harvested field and garden crops. Naturally, the proceeds were intended for SS purposes. Of course, everyone tried to bring a lot home, which most of them also managed with the help of the gendarmes, who turned a blind eye, or had to be very cleverly hidden. Greens, potatoes, fruit, tomatoes, swede, carrots came into the ghetto in this way, albeit only in small quantities. Often people were caught and when the Nazi authorities found out, they were locked up and then the next transport to the east threatened. Later, the farming people were allowed to create small gardens themselves between the entrenchments, wherever there was a green spot on the periphery of the ghetto. This was then extended to the prominent people, so that every higher-ranking official or workshop manager etc. had a garden. Mainly potatoes, swede, cauliflower, carrots, etc. were planted. Ordinary mortals, of course, could not acquire a garden and, as in everything else, were dependent on their hunger pangs.

A chapter in itself was the kitchen and provisions, as well as the bakery, all of which were subordinate to the economic department. Of course, the cooks in the kitchen took as much food as they wanted, because it would have been difficult to prevent them. The kitchen staff always stole large amounts of food from the kitchen for relatives and friends, as well as ingredients such as margarine, sugar, meat, flour, etc., which of course meant that the food of the whole population was poorer. The soups for example had no fat at all, as the little margarine that was supposed to be put in by the cooks didn't seem to be put in there. / Nobody would have noticed anyway whether that little bit was in it or not /. If you consider that in the 5 - 6 large kitchens at least 30 - 50, later even up to 100 men and women worked in shifts, including the ration service who cut the relevant day coupons off the ration cards when the food was distributed in front of the kitchen, plus the kitchen control commission, which had to determine in the kitchen itself whether the raw products made available were actually put into the food, plus the kitchen guard, who had to take care that no food was carried out of the kitchen, the Kripo had to solve the particular thefts and the later-created economic police /Wipo/ who had to deal with special economic matters, which is to say they let dear God be a good man and ate and stole bravely, so one can imagine how it was with the food for those who did not have any such benefits. The same conditions prevailed everywhere in the provisions, the bakery, the portioning station and in the material store and so one should not be surprised if these people sitting at the crib not only ate well but were also able to barter everything else. Soon the cooks and food supervisors set up special apartments where they lived together with their families or relatives and a private life was made possible, the rooms could be better equipped and the residents of the same saw things they would never see served on the plates or in the stores.

This brings me to another chapter, the so-called Raumwirtschaft or Ubikationskanzlei /bosses were Messrs. Löwinger and Rindler/. This office was responsible for the room allocation

for the ghetto inmates. In the early days, when only the barracks were inhabited, each was entitled to about 2.10 cm2, which roughly corresponded to the area of ​​a bed plus a shelf behind the head. Of course, the Council of Elders and the staff lived much better with their relatives and had smaller rooms of 6-20 cm2 for the family, where they soon furnished themselves architecturally with older furniture or new furniture made to order in Theresienstadt. Soon the various workshop managers, kitchens - etc., provisioning staff, higher officials, etc. moved with the permission of the Ubikationskanzlei with their families, because rooms were vacated by evacuation and deaths. People who had protection from the authorities or who could "buy" it from the space management were soon assigned rooms to live separately and the others just had to continue to live in a cramped manner. At the time of overcrowding it was a shame to look at the old people, to whom the space management, partly for lack of protection, partly for lack of space, did not allocate better rooms than attics, where they laid in the greatest dirt on the bare stone, in the summer in terrible heat and in winter just as cold. Many enterprising younger people who knew something about work and also had some uncle in the Council of Elders or room management were given free building material and at the same time a larger room in some attic, where they then broke through the roofs and built nice, habitable attics for 2-5. It was very comfortable here, almost like in civilian life. The so-called house elders, who lived in 1 or more rooms with their families, also led a comfortable life. Most of these people also had another source of livelihood, which arose from their position in Th. Since they had acquired this position through relatives or other relationships through protection, one can imagine the system of favoritism that prevailed, how few real experts were in their correct positions, and how discontent among the rest of the mortals grew.

Due to heavy evacuations during the year 43, the population was reduced and the housing conditions would have generally improved if the order had not been given one day that the largest men’s barracks, the Sudeten barracks, must be vacated within 48 hours, as the SS authorities intended to move there from Prague /Probably because they felt safest there in the midst of the Jews from possible enemy air raids/. It was a hot summer day at the time and when the order to evacuate was given, there was indescribable chaos. There were about 4800 men who, according to orders, were mostly transferred to unoccupied attics. Only individual groups of protected children were able to obtain orders to move to small rooms in blocks from the Ubikationskanzlei. All old flat cars and funeral cars were taken out of the depot and all rucksacks, suitcases, bedrolls, tables, chairs, beds, etc. loaded and transported to the new residential areas. It was like being in an evacuated city before enemy occupation. One helped the other and all were extremely exhausted from the hard work in the dust and heat that evening. I was assigned an attic with several friends, which was very bad and we decided, like most of the others, to take matters into our own hands and build an attic somewhere on our own. I went on a search and found an ideal place in a former city administration building in the attic, from which there was a wonderful view of the market square. In consideration of the exceptional situation,

the room management approached all requests in this regard with benevolence and the news spread that in general there would be no objections to converting the attics into attics and that this would be tacitly approved. However, in general, material was not just made available. Well, we did what all other fellow sufferers did and took material where we could get it. My friend Paul Dub /by civil profession a dental technician - in Theresienstadt however, menage service/ had relationships with people from the wood store and we got a huge number of wooden planks, strips, squared timber, ship planks of all kinds and planing from there over several consecutive days; I obtained the material through my connections to the machine joinery. At that time I had already left the transport hundertschaft over a year ago and worked in the accounting department of the production department, in which position I had free access to all production facilities and was able to establish many relationships. So it was possible for me to use a lot of material like locks, hinges, glass, nail screws, tools, etc. Like lime, cement, sand, gypsum, etc. Heraklite slabs were piled up in large quantities in the courtyard of our building and were supposed to be used to expand the attic anyway, but the plan had always been postponed by the building authorities. I started now with Paul Dub and a second colleague, Andrej Malinovski /from civilian profession fur cutter - in Theresienstadt carpenter/ to build and took some special craftsmen, such as glaziers, window carpenters, upholsterers, bricklayers, locksmiths to help . We paid for their work for weeks with our stocks of bread, jam, margarine, canned food, sugar, ate nothing and in the meantime worked when we weren't professionally employed, so that our health pretty much deteriorated, but in a few days the roof was broken through, the window was finished, the scaffolding of the 16 cm2 mansard was erected and in the course of a few weeks everything was covered with Heraklite and bricked up, painted and sealed and 3 couches, armchairs, chest of drawers, built-in cupboards and moved in with us. From that time on we led a somewhat private life with our friends and spouses. We also had electric cookers, immersion heaters, heating pads, irons, everything was on electric and in her free time my wife switched on in the attic like at home and she cooked, ironed, washed, and made clothes, all of which gave her great pleasure. The other two women had good apartments elsewhere, so that Manička and I enjoyed the attic the most. Many friends came to visit and, above all, my mother was now our daily guest. At that time we were just getting several parcels from our Prague relatives, some of our friends were in the farm, others in the bakery, Dub could get some food from the menage service every now and then and that's how we lived at that time happier and hoped to survive the terrible war in Theresienstadt halfway protected.

In the course of 1943, large furniture transports came to Theresienstadt, which came from old, partly broken furniture in the Jewish apartments of the Jews deported from Bohemia and Moravia. Some of this furniture was badly infested and had to be disinfected, after which it was then allocated to all prominent people in the ghetto, provided they had a kind of private apartment. Some of the furniture was set up in the Magdeburger, some in the Hamburg barracks on the courtyards, much of it was taken away by other people /who were not prominents

- but already had nice apartments, because the large number of items was difficult to to guard. I also procured from there 2 wire inlays for our couches, a folding table, 3 upholstered armchairs, 1 cupboard, and a nice large mirror, which we could use very well in the attic, my wife was particularly happy with the mirror and that we now put new wardrobe in conjunction with the other closets that had already been installed, all our clothes and linen in them nicely and cleanly, as the constant opening and closing of the suitcases was extremely uncomfortable for us.

Major changes had meanwhile also taken place in the ghetto. Probably to create an alibi in front of the world, the Nazi authorities ordered one day that all kinds of shops should be set up in Theresienstadt within a week. We should be very lucky to be in a model and propaganda ghetto. Men’s clothing, women’s clothing, men’s underclothes, and women’s underclothes, children's clothing, kitchen utensils, paper and haberdashery, suitcases and leather goods stores were set up, employees were put in and the goods from the sorted out contents of the confiscated suitcases emptied in the clothing room were made available. Selling took place using a coupon, there were coupons of different types, depending on the articles to be bought. The ghetto inmates were able to shop on a rotating basis, but the intervals were so long that their turn came once every 2-3 months and there was mostly nothing in stock or only the greatest trash, as things were sorted into 3 categories in the clothing room and only the third quality was made available to the ghetto shops. Most of it was unusable. Payment also had to be made, and specifically for this purpose the Nazis had special ghetto money printed in the Czech National Bank with values ​​of K 1, - 2, - 5, - 10, - 20, - 50, - and 100, - in different sizes and colors, however, with the same motifs. On one side there was an image of Moses with the tablets of the law /this was probably done with mocking or at least ironic intent/ and on the other side was next to the usual text Receipt for ... crowns, the number and the signature Jakob Edelstein, Jewish Elder. If the shopkeepers in question got better things from the clothes closet, they didn’t put them up for sale, of course, but exchanged them for groceries or cigarettes. We had to have special purchase certificates for complete suits or shoes, which were very difficult to obtain, i.e. protection was necessary for this. A so-called grocery store was also opened, but there were no real groceries in it, only spices of all kinds, artificial pepper, paprika, garlic powder, mustard, tomato sauce, spicy spreads, and now and then saccharine. My wife and I almost never went shopping because it always made us angry. At most, we once bought a few colorful pillowcases to decorate our attic.

A special bank was entrusted with the issue of the money as well as the payment of the working ghetto inmates and their account management / so that they could also save / which was of course created for this purpose and which proudly bore the name Bank of the Jewish Self-Government. The whole institute was of course just a farce, resp. a Potemkin village like everything else, but the appearance was kept up all along, as if the whole thing was real and regular. Since the money had no coverage whatsoever, at best in private transactions it had the value of game tokens. It was not valid outside the ghetto and it was also strictly forbidden

to spend this money outside the ghetto. We heard that they supposedly paid relatively large amounts of money outside to get this money for the sake of the curiosity. The bank was the building in which I lived in the attic.

In the same building there was also the health service /Ministry of Public Welfare and Hygiene/ as well as the finance department - the Ministry of Finance and the Ghetto Court - an institution set up by the Nazis, which had to try all major offenses and crimes in the ghetto insofar as the Nazis were interested. This ghetto court was of course a Potemkin village too.

As part of the opening of the shops, a coffee house was also created, the interior was relatively nicely furnished. You could have tea or coffee in it to consume, table games were forbidden, you couldn't smoke in it, of course, but there was always a nice music program in the afternoons and evenings, first-class cabaret artists, jazz band and classical music, singing, etc., so the thing was always full. After all, the coffee house provided a pleasant change in exile. The Jazz Singers, Mayer 3Note 3: Meyer - Sattler, Ghettoswingers, were particularly popular. We called this coffeehouse the largest in the world because it was a coffeehouse for 30,000 people.

Likewise, as part of the propaganda for the model ghetto, the so-called city beautification campaign was ordered in the spring of 1944. The K production tent had just been demolished and the marketplace was completely empty. Within a few days, the market square was plowed, sown, large flower beds laid out, benches set up everywhere, /this also in other parts of the city/, a music pavilion was built in which the city band played all day, and the houses were repainted all over the city, the entrenchments around the city opened as a promenade for the ghetto inmates, a huge children's playground made available on the large slope, a really nice children's hospital set up in the former villa of a German-Aryan resident of the city, who moved elsewhere, a pavilion for small children was built in one ghetto park so the smallest could play, and even bathing facilities in a pool, and a community building with a theater, cinema and reading room was set up in the former Sokol gymnasium, but all of these were only intended as Potemkin villages because an international commission was coming to visit and see the conditions in Theresienstadt. However, for all the time before the Commission came we took advantage of this facility, though we always had the uncomfortable feeling that this joy would not last long.

The commission finally came from SS-Hauptsturmführer Rahm /Camp Commandant/, as well as his satellites and the gentlemen from the Council of Elders, but it turned out that this commission was not really an international control organ, but only contained representatives of those nations that were already in thrall to the Nazis or under Nazi leadership, such as Danes and the like and, moreover, the selected commissioners apparently agreed entirely with Nazi policy. The control was carried out to the full satisfaction of all involved, the SS was satisfied, the commission was supposedly also satisfied and in a certain sense the Jews were also because the SS promised certain benefits considering the good result. But the bitter end would still follow.

This condition and the actual beautification of the city and improvement of the conditions in the ghetto had progressed little by little and lifted our general mood, so that we could devote ourselves to the questions of daily life, all the more so as the political situation also foresaw an imminent end to the German armies in Africa, Sicily, Italy, etc., which had been driven out and received ever greater blows.

But, as I said, this improvement had only occurred gradually and towards the end. The number of deaths had dropped from the record number of 1942 /205 daily/ to 20-30 deaths daily. Otherwise, however, there was a constant change of circumstances, excitements and incidents of all and unpleasant kinds were always the order of the day, people were constantly locked up, taken to the Small Fortress, beaten half or completely dead during interrogation, badly mistreated, etc.

One of the worst SS people, who was feared everywhere, was Scharführer Heinl. He seemed like a pike in a carp pond, he was always out and about in the ghetto and suddenly appeared exactly where he was not expected and saw someone secretly smoking or bringing stolen vegetables home or doing other prohibited things, such as carrying items stolen back from the closet /the technical term was ausschleussen/. There were always slaps in the face, imprisonment, and the next evacuation threatened. This Public Enemy No.1 as we called him later took over the supervision of the clothing closet, in which the Czech gendarmes under the leadership of the Oberwachtmeister Novak and the Sergeant Pribyl. These two gendarmes, who would like to be particularly praised, behaved very well to us ghetto inmates at all times, helped a lot of people as they could, always secretly stood in the sharpest opposition to the Nazis because they were ardent Czech nationalists and did all possible harm to the Nazis. They supported everyone who somehow came into contact with them, they came to our theater performances of Czech operas in disguise and really did their best for a good cause. Of course, they had to be very careful outwardly. Herr Heinl now led the toughest regiment in the clothing closet, there were several incidents every day, people had to undress naked, it didn't matter that members of the opposite sex were present, scenes of slapping proceeded without pause, Heinl was always on the body searches of arriving transports and was so brutal in finding forbidden objects on the transport participants that he even hit and kicked old men or women. The female transport participants were always stripped naked in a separate room and searched by 3 female Gestapo officers. These were 3 ugly, vulgar older women from Leitmeritz, who were helped by some ghetto inmates and 1 or 2 female Jewish detectives. These female Gestapo officers were also otherwise very feared, as they never let us rest under the gendarmerie and ghetto guard assistance, with constant house and barracks searches. They always confiscated a large amount of contraband, which most of the ghetto inmates still had in large numbers. Wherever they came across cigarettes or money they confiscated it, and when there were no or only trustworthy viewers they kept it and did not report anything. However, if larger sums of money or numbers of cigarettes were found, the owners were beaten up, locked up and could expect to be on the next transport. These ladies were commonly called Berušky based on the Czech word bráti /to take/. Some gendarmes /Drahonovsky, Sykora/ excelled in providing assistance in an inglorious way, because they made a lot of reports and even doled out slaps in the face. When the Berušky approached, all contraband

was hidden or carried away by the inmates if it was still possible. Even so, much was still found.

One day an order was finally given to clear the Hamburg barracks too. Here, too, 3,500 women were affected, some of whom had to be housed in attics and some in barracks that had just been vacated. At this time, the otherwise so strict space management gave special permits so that women could move in with their husbands in attics, as long as the other attic occupants did not raise any objections. This was very welcome to me. My wife was always with me in the evening to cook anyway and only left at 9 or 10 at curfew, which had been very uncomfortable for us, so from now on she always stayed with us overnight and slept on the big couch. Also my colleague Malinovski often had his wife at our house at night and we not only didn’t bother each other but led a very sociable life together.

And again there were evacuations in the spring of 1944. This time we were all afraid, because the AK no longer protected and none of us had such a position that made him indispensable or influential acquaintances on the line who could keep him. The danger for our parents was particularly great. On the first transport, the Malinovskis mother-in-law was beset by misfortune and despite the children's best efforts to get her out, she had to go, so Andrej and his wife went with them voluntarily. The separation was very touching, we had always been good friends the whole time and we didn't know if we would ever meet again. During the transport, fate met my friend Paul Dub and his wife Alice, with whom my Manička was very good friends from Prague and they had always lived together. We were deeply shaken and helped pack with a heavy heart. Everyone was in tears. I was very fond of both spouses, although they did not harmonize with one another and the beautiful Alice officially lived with another man. We were very sad about our friends leaving and couldn't get over it for a long time. I then lived alone with Manička in the attic, almost like in civilian life, we had visitors every day and felt very happy for a while. Mother was healthy and with us every day. We also often wrote short cards to our Prague relatives, and often received messages and parcels from them, which always made us very happy. My wife's cousins ​​were with us every day or we were with them. When we feared that the room management would send us an uncomfortable third roommate into the attic, we voluntarily took in our Prague friend Philipp Spira, who worked in agriculture and didn't come home until the evening. Unfortunately, the idyll only lasted 2 months. Just as we had cleaned the attic of vermin one day, the order came to clear the large bank building, as well as a few other blocks, because the SS authorities wanted to move more members and offices. We had to move out with bleeding hearts, see the attic destroyed and be separated again. I went to the Jäger barracks, taking some pieces of furniture with me, which I managed to accommodate privately with the help of a group elder from the Jäger barracks in a common room there, and my wife went to the western barracks that had been set up in the meantime. We tried to arrange ourselves as far as possible and thought we would hold out until the end of the war.

But at the beginning of October, rumors about the transport came up again and quickly intensified. This time 5000 men should go to work in the Reich. I did not know which way and where it was going, but it didn’t look good, as we had received little or no information about the recently departed transports. Spira was the next victim and went with the first 1,500 men. Again, I was lucky, as before, but further mixed transports were announced. It looked like the whole ghetto would be liquidated

and war invalids and people with war decorations who had previously been protected now had to register and most of them were put into line. Even the so-far protected half-breeds went to the registration and only a few managed to get to the machine, i.e. to have their protection confirmed. Mother, Manička and I were also added to the 6th transport. The schleusse was in the Hamburg barracks, as from there the path led through the back gate directly to the platform and the loading of the wagons was faster. There was great excitement, as not only the 1,500 people lined up for the transport filled the rooms, but also, as always, a large reserve of 500 people, as well as large numbers of people who were not part of the transport, going in and out of the barracks. All toilets and washrooms were always full and dirty, people were no longer embarrassed about each other and women washed themselves naked in front of men and vice versa. Large numbers of Kripo and ghetto guards, as well as officials, tried to maintain order, or rather mainly to help their own people. Moving children of the Protectorate was already less possible this time, but it was all the more striking. I was very scared out of consideration for my lung disease because I could hardly go to work. However, the intervention of the attending physician did not help, we had to go because it was not our ability to work but our ability to travel that made the difference. So we had to go through the terrible crowd to the barracks exit with all our luggage and were brought into the coupe. The luggage was crammed in through the window with great speed, so that we all almost suffocated, as tight as we were already packed. Heinl hit everyone in front of the barracks, including Dr. Murmelstein, it was brutal. The train left on October 12th in the evening, we waited until early in the morning in Bauschowitz, then it went via Aussig, Tetschen, Pirna to Dresden, we liked the train journey very much after such a long time and we hoped, according to the rumors, to get to Königstein or Riesa soon. But our hopes turned out to be deceptive and we passed these cities without having to get out. From Dresden we drove eastwards and I immediately suspected that it was going to Poland, maybe even to Birkenau. But I had only a very faint idea of ​​Birkenau, at least I knew nothing about the horrors that awaited us. We passed Bautzen, Görlitz, Breslau and my hunch became a certainty. After 3 days we arrived in Katowice and finally in the terrible Auschwitz. Unfortunately, what was going on there is now generally known. I don't want to write anything about it, because I immediately suffer a mental depression again if I only hear the terrible name.

Dokumentační akci dáno k dispozici k opsání panem Maxem Munkem, Uhers. Hradiště.

Za Dokumentační akci přijal:

Scheck

Za archiv přijal:

Tressler

Opsáno: MF