The first Jewish prisoners arrived to what was to become the Terezín ghetto in November 1941. They got accommodated in Sudetenland Barracks. Their transport was marked Ak I, consisting of 342 young men. The train was dispatched from the Prague Hybernská Station (nowadays Masaryk Station) and arrived to Bohušovice nad Ohří. After their arrival at Bohušovice railway station the prisoners had to walk all the way to Terezín.

The Ak I train transported prisoners who had been working as craftsmen and workers (welders, carpenters, cabinet makers, electricians, brick layers etc.) before. Their task was to adapt the eleven army barracks in Terezín to accommodate tens of thousands of further prisoners brought in on further trains.

Since the year 1943 part of the Berlin archive of the Imperial Security Agency (RSHA) had been deposited in the Sudetenland barracks, the area became off-limits fo ghetto inmates.

After the Nazi ghetto leadership had fled in May 1945, the Sudetenland barracks were changed into a hospital, in order to deal with the typhoid epidemy that broke out in Terezín towards the end of the war. The doctors and nurses from the Czech Help Action, later accompanied by some Red Army medics, worked tirelessly to limit the amount of victims of this postwar calamity.