Deportation, 1942
Camilla’s train ticket to Theresienstadt gave her a new identity—TR*918—a designation that remained with her until liberation.
Despite Lony’s four-year effort to get her parents out of Austria, Camilla and Hermann, along with 1,000 other Viennese Jews, were deported to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, on August 20, 1942. Many were elderly Jewish war veterans or eminent members of the Jewish community.
The Theresienstadt concentration camp, a dismal fortress, had characteristics of a ghetto and served as a transit point to extermination camps. Soon after their arrival, officials notified the Gottliebs of their imminent deportation to Poland, a certain death. According to one of Camilla’s letters, they were “saved by a relative of ours, Captain Klaber” and their names were removed from the transfer list.
Transport document, about August 1942
This small train ticket stub documented a transforming moment in Camilla's life—her forced transport from Vienna to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
A group of Dutch Jews just arrived in Theresienstadt being herded through a stone archway into the camp (no date). (Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
