December transports, consisting mostly of Jewish craftsmen, engineers, and other skilled workers of Zionist sympathies, were known as the Aufbaukommando (Work Detail) and their members were exempt from deportation until September 1943. The members of the Aufbaukommando used creative methods to improve the infrastructure of the ghetto and prepare it to house an average of 40,000 people during its existence. The construction project was funded by stolen Jewish property. When the first transport arrived, there was only one vat for coffee with a capacity of ; by the next year, there were sufficient kettles to make 50,000 cups of ersatz coffee in two hours. The waterworks often broke down during the first months due to inadequate capacity. To improve potable water supply, and so everyone could wash daily, workers drilled wells and overhauled the pipe system. The Germans provided the materials for these improvements, largely to reduce the chance of communicable disease spreading beyond the ghetto, but Jewish engineers directed the projects. Jews lived in the eleven barracks in the fortress, while civilians continued to inhabit the 218 civilian houses. Segregation between the two groups was strictly enforced and resulted in harsh punishments on Jews who left their barracks. By the end of the year, 7,365 people had been deported to the ghetto, of whom 2,000 were from Brno and the rest from Prague. 1942 The first transport from Theresienstadt left on 9 January 1942 for the Riga Ghetto. It was the only transport whose destination was known to the deportees; other transports simply departed for "the East". The next day, the SS publicly hanged nine men for smuggling letters out of the ghetto, an event that caused widespread outrage and disquiet. The first transports targeted mostly able-bodied people. If one person in a family were selected for a transport, family members would typically volunteer to accompany them, which has been analyzed as an example of family solidarity or social expectations. From June 1942, the SS interned elderly and "prominent" Jews from the Reich at Theresienstadt. Due to the desire to accommodate these Jews, the non-Jewish Czechs living in Theresienstadt were expelled, and the town was closed off by the end of June. In May, the self-administration had reduced rations for the elderly in order to increase the food available to hard laborers, as part of its strategy to save as many children and young people as possible to emigrate