Olomouc

The assembly point for Jews from Olomouc was located in a school building in the Hodolany district of Olomouc. All administrative procedures were overseen by representatives of the Prague Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Prag). The internal functioning of the transit camp was overseen by a representative of the Prague Jewish Religious Community. According to eyewitness accounts, some of the deportees were subjected to acts of violence by the head of the Olomouc Gestapo, Heinrich Gottschling. Those awaiting deportation spent one or two nights on the bare floor of the school gym. Toilet sinks were all they had for washing. Early in the morning they were lined up in columns of five and taken away to the railway station. The Wolf family from the nearby village of Tršice did not turn up for deportation at the assembly point in Olomouc, as they had gone into hiding. A diary kept by the son, Otto, gives an account of their hardships and the help they received from the local population while in hiding (Diary of Otto Wolf, 1942–1945, published several times after the war).

Five transports (designated by the letters AAf, AAg, AAm, Aao) were dispatched from Olomouc in the summer of 1942, between 26 June and 8 July 1942. The last transport (AE 7) was sent from Olomouc to the Terezín ghetto as late as March 1945, taking 53 people from mixed marriages for “segregated labour deployment” (geschlossener Arbeitseinsatz).

In total, 3,507 people were deported from Olomouc and the surrounding areas. Only 294 of them lived to see the liberation.