Towards the end of November 1941, the Nazi authorities started deporting the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia (the Protectorate) to the fortress city Theresienstadt, located about 60 km north of Prague. The fortress was built in the 18th century and now served as a place for concentrating the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Thousands of deportees were housed in the army barracks under harsh conditions. The Nazis sought to portray Theresienstadt as a "model Jewish settlement", thus camouflaging their true aim and policy of mass annihilation. Essentially, Theresienstadt served as a transit camp for the Jews. Starting in January 1942, transports from Theresienstadt started making their way to Riga and as the year wore on the transports started heading also to extermination camps and murder sites, among them Auschwitz, Treblinka and Maly Trostenets.
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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.

The Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung), headed by SS-Hauptsturmfuehrer Alois Brunner, was responsible for conducting the deportation of Jews from Vienna. The first step was to send out orders to potential deportees indicating when they were to report at the assembly point. At the same time the local Jewish community instructed the deportees that they were allowed to take baggage and personal effects not in excess of 50 kilograms. Each deportee was allowed to take 100 Reichsmark on his/her person.
According to existing documentation, Jews deported to Theresienstadt during the summer-autumn of 1942, reported either to the assembly site at the Jewish school on Kleine Sperlgasse 2 or to Malzgasse 7/Miesbachgasse 8.
Transport No. 30 departed at 7:08 pm from Aspangbahnhof in Vienna (Wien) on July 10, 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt on July 11. The transport consisted of 1,000 Jews, made up mainly of elderly Jewish deportees. 961 deportees were older than 61, the average age on the transport was 73 years. Six armed policemen (Schutzpolizei) under the command of First lieutenant Josef Tremer were assigned to guard the Jewish deportees throughout the journey. The guards had all reported by 11 am at the station where the deportees had assembled.
The train's route took it through Vienna’s Nordbahnhof, Floridsdorf, Jedlersdorf, Stockerau, Absdorf-Hippersdorf, Gmuend, Tabor, Prague (Praha) and Bohusovice. At the rail station in Bohusovice, the Jews were taken off the train and forced to make their way to Theresienstadt on foot, a distance of about 3 km. The transport was given the reference IV/3 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings; in this regard the Roman numeral IV refers to Vienna.
Many of the elderly Jews among these “old-age transports” (Alterstransporte) succumbed in Theresienstadt to starvation and disease during the summer months. Others were deported in October 1942 from Theresienstadt to Treblinka, where they were murdered.
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