Towards the end of November 1941, the Nazi authorities began to deport the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia (the Protectorate) to the fortress city of Theresienstadt, about 60 km north of Prague. The city’s 18th century fortress now served as a ghetto. Thousands of deportees were housed in the army barracks under terrible conditions. By depicting Theresienstadt as a "model of Jewish settlement" and thus concealing its role as a transit camp for Jewish deportees, the Nazis were able to camouflage their true objectives and policies namely, the mass annihilation of the Jews.
Show more Commencing in January 1942, transports started to leave Theresienstadt for Riga. Later, some of the transports were sent to extermination camps and murder sites, including Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maly Trostenets.

In June 1942, the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office) embarked on mass deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria to Theresienstadt. The Jews sent there were mostly elderly (above the age of 65). They belonged to various groups consisting primarily of those who had earned high military decorations and citations during the First World War, people of international renown, and Jews who had formerly been married to non-Jewish spouses. Included in the last group were what the Nazis coined Mischling, that is, the offspring of Jewish and non-Jewish unions (a term literally meaning "crossbreed"). Essentially these were Germans deemed by the Nazi racist laws to be Jewish because they did not have full Aryan ancestry.

Following the two big deportations in June and July 1942, five smaller transports were carried out from September consisting of about 50 Jews each. The remaining members of the Jewish administration were on these transports. Several Jews from so-called mixed marriages were also deported. On these transports an additional 242 persons were sent to Theresienstadt by the end of the year. From then on the only Jews allowed to stay in Cologne were those married to non-Jewish spouses.

This transport was the fourth transport from Cologne to Theresienstadt. It consisted of 50 Jews, most of whom had previously lived in the assembly camps. Thirty six of the deportees were women and 14 were men. The average age of the deportees was 64. The oldest deportee was a 95 year old man. The transport left Cologne on September 12 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt on the same day. There it was given the reference III/4, the Roman numeral III signifying the city of Cologne. According to Historians Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle, three people from this transport survived to the end of the war.
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