People in the ghetto lived in constant fear of deportation to one of the extermination camps Treblinka, Auschwitz or Maly Trostinec. At the same time conditions of life and work continued to deteriorate. As in other camps there was also in Theresienstadt a Jewish Council of Elders, chosen by the SS, under the chairmen (in that order) Jakob Edelstein, Paul Eppstein, and Benjamin Murmelstein. They had to draw up lists for deportations, to distribute food, clothes, and work, and to keep up order in general.

Thanks to the great number of artists, writers and academics among the prisoners there was a very active cultural life in the ghetto, which the SS not only tolerated but even capitalised upon. When at the end of 1943 the first facts about the extermination camps became internationally known, the Nazi leadership decided to allow the International Commitee of the Red Cross (ICRC) a visit to Theresienstadt. In preparation of this event thousands of prisoners were deported to Auschwitz in order to reduce the overcrowding in the ghetto. The ICRC-delegation in July 1944 was shown the Potemkin facade of a normal town with pseudo-shops, cafés, kindergardens, a school and even a bank. But that visit changed nothing as far as the reality of the ghetto was concerned. Hunger, the lack of sanitary installations, and inadequate clothing led to thousands of deaths. Of the roughly 140,000 people deported to Theresienstadt, 33,000 died there, 88,000 were taken to extermination camps and murdered. Only 1900 were still alive when the ghetto was liberated on 7 May 1945.

For the most deportees Theresienstadt ghetto was – provided they did not die as a result of the appaling living conditions there – only an interim on their way to the extermination camps. The deportations from Theresienstadt took place in five stages:

• From the beginning of January until 8 September 1942 there were 26 transports carrying altogether 26,000 prisoners to Izbica, Lublin, Maly Trostinec, Riga, Zamosc, Piaski, Rejowiec, Warsaw, Raasika, and Minsk as well as other places.
  
  
• On eleven »Altentransporte« (old people's transports) between 19 September and 22 October 1942 19,004 people, almost all of whom were more than 65 years old, were deported to the extermination camp at Treblinka and to Maly Trostinec, where they were murdered without exception. Only three survived.
  
  
• Between 26 October 1942 and 1 February 1943 8867 persons were deported to Auschwitz on six transports. They were subject to a »selection«, as was the practice in Auschwitz. Most of them went to the gas chambers. Of those selected as »capable of work« 124 people lived to see the liberation.
  
  
• From 6 September 1943 to 18 May 1944 17,570 prisoners from Theresienstadt were brought to the so-called »family camp« in Auschwitz-Birkenau on eight transports. They were not subject to a »selection.« Those who did not die in the camp or were not deported as »capable of work« to other concentration camps, were murdered in the gas chambers in the night 8/9 March 1944 or between 10 and 12 July 1944. 1167 prisoners survived.
  
  
• Between 28 September and 28 October 1944 a further 18,402 people were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on eleven transports, of whom 1574 sur-vived.

Apart from these large-scale transports, smaller deportations took place, whose destinations we do not always know.

Of the more than 15,000 deportees from Vienna and from Bohemia and Moravia about 7500 were later transported to extermination camps and murdered. Over 6200 Viennese Jews died in Theresienstadt itself from the deprivations they had to suffer and the ensuing diseases.