World of Yesterday

Source: Terezinska Pametni Kniha/Theresienstaedter Gedenkbuch, Terezinska Iniciativa, vol. I-II Melantrich, Praha 1995, vol. III Academia Verlag, Prag 2000
Last Name: Brichta
First Name: Zikmund
Gender (according to given name): Male
Date of Birth: 15/09/1896
Details of transport: Transport K from Brno,Brno Hlavni Mesto,Moravia-Silesia,Czechoslovakia to Theresienstadt,Ghetto,Czechoslovakia on 05/12/1941
Details of 2nd transport: Transport Be , Train Da 404 from Theresienstadt,Ghetto,Czechoslovakia to Raasiku,Harjumaa,Estonia on 01/09/1942
Prisoner Nr. in Transport: 85
Prisoner Nr. in 2nd Transport: 426
Status in the source: murdered
Type of material: List of Theresienstadt camp inmates
Item ID: 4759403

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Estonia#Concentration_camps_established_for_foreign_Jews

According to testimony of the survivors, at least two transports with about 2,100–2,150 Central European Jews,[11] arrived at the railway station at Raasiku, one from Theresienstadt (Terezin) with Czechoslovakian Jews and one from Berlin with German citizens. Around 1,700–1,750 people were immediately taken to an execution site at the Kalevi-Liiva sand dunes and shot.[11] About 450 people were selected for work at the Jägala camp[11][12]

Transport Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt arrived at the Raasiku station on September 5, 1942, after a five-day trip.[13][14] According to testimony by Ralf Gerrets, one of the accused at the Holocaust trials in 1961, eight busloads of Estonian auxiliary police had arrived from Tallinn.[14] The selection process was supervised by Ain-Ervin Mere, chief of Sicherheitspolizei in Estonia; those not selected for slave labor were sent by bus to an execution site near the camp. Later the police[14] in teams of 6 to 8 men[11] would execute the Jews by machine gun fire, on other hand, during later investigation some guards of camp denied participation of police and said that execution was done by camp personnel.[11] On the first day a total of 900 people were murdered in this way.[11][14] Gerrets told that he had fired a pistol at a victim who was still making noises in the pile of bodies.[14][15] The whole operation was directed by Obersturmführer Heinrich Bergmann and Oberscharführer Julius Geese.[11][14] Few witnesses pointed out Heinrich Bergmann as the key figure behind the extermination of Estonian gypsies. In the case of Be 1.9.1942 the only ones chosen for labor and to survive the war were a small group of young women who were taken through concentration camps in Estonia, Poland and Germany to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated.[16] Camp commandant Laak used the women as sex slaves, killing many after they had outlived their usefulness.[12][17]

A number of foreign witnesses were heard at the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia, including five women, who had been transported on Be 1.9.1942 from Theresienstadt.[14]

"The accused Mere, Gerrets and Viik actively participated in crimes and mass killings that were perpetrated by the Nazi invaders on the territory of the Estonian SSR. In accordance with the Nazi racial theory, the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst were instructed to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies. For that end in August–September 1941 Mere and his collaborators set up a death camp at Jägala, 30 km (19 mi) from Tallinn. Mere put Aleksander Laak in charge of the camp; Ralf Gerrets was appointed his deputy. On September 5, 1942 a train with approximately 1,500 Czechoslovak citizens arrived to the Raasiku railway station. Mere, Laak and Gerrets personally selected who of them should be executed and who should be moved to the Jägala death camp. More than 1,000 people, mostly children, the old, and the infirm, were translocated to a wasteland at Kalevi-Liiva where they were monstrously executed in a special pit. In mid-September the second troop train with 1,500 prisoners arrived to the railway station from Germany. Mere, Laak, and Gerrets selected another thousand victims that were condemned by them to extermination. This group of prisoners, which included nursing women and their new-born babies, were transported to Kalevi-Liiva where they were killed.
In March 1943 the personnel of the Kalevi-Liiva camp executed about fifty Gypsies, half of which were under 5 years of age. Also were executed 60 Gypsy children of school age..."[18]