„Return undesirable" – Deportations from Wulkow

After the war, camp commandant Stuschka was charged, among other things, with murder at the Vienna People's Court. The trial mainly centred around the case of Herbert Grätzer, who had fled to his mother in Berlin, was tracked down by Stuschka himself and brought back to Wulkow. During the interrogation in Stuschka's barrack, several prisoners unanimously agreed that they had heard a shot. One prisoner, who had to enter the room afterwards, reported seeing blood on the floor. However, none of the witnesses who appeared in court had seen a corpse. Stuschka was acquitted of the murder charge. Nevertheless, he was at least partly responsible for the deaths of numerous Wulkow prisoners: he deported sick prisoners back to the Theresienstadt ghetto, which was usually tantamount to a death sentence due to the mass deportations to Auschwitz organised from there. He also sent prisoners to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp or to the Gestapo prison Little Fortress, which was located next to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Many were murdered there.

„On 18/01/1945, [Stuschka] sent me and nine others to the detention centre in Berlin, seven of us continued onwards, I don't know what happened to the other three fellow prisoners. The seven of us travelled to the Small Fortress in Theresienstadt where I returned to alone on 25/05/1945 because I became sick with typhoid. The other six fellow prisoners who had travelled with me were killed. I was able to save myself because I volunteered to work as a gravedigger.“

Mikuláš Deckner, undated

„On 13.11.44, because of the escape of two from our work detail, the camp commandant sent [...] me and approx. 20 other prisoners [...] as a punitive transport of hostages first to Berlin-Schulstraße and then a few days later to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the remark RU [Rückkehr unerwünscht/return undesirable].“

Jiří Vaníček, 1996