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.

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. 40 departed on train Da 513 from Aspangbahnhof in Vienna (Wien) at 21:00 on September 10, 1942 and arrived in Theresienstadt on September 11. The transport consisted of 1,000 Jewish deportees, including many patients from the Steinhof mental health institution that had been totally evacuated of its inhabitants. 651 deportees were older than 61, the average age of the deportees was 63 years.
The train followed a route that took it through Vienna’s Nordbahnhof, Floridsdorf, Jedlersdorf, Stockerau, Absdorf-Hippersdorf, Gmuend, Tabor, Prague (Praha) and Bohusovice. At the station in Bohusovice, the Jews were forced to disembark and walk about three kilometers to Theresienstadt, where the transport was noted in the ghetto records as IV/10; the Roman numeral IV representing Vienna. Among the deportees on this transport was Margarete Gertrude Neumann, the youngest child of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl.
The following is an excerpt from the testimony of Trude Groag, who was employed as a nurse in the hospital in Theresienstadt:
On September 11, 1942, a pleasant day in autumn, a transport stopped at the ghetto’s hospital L124, packed to overflowing with sick patients of transport E/IV from Vienna. Dr. Reinisch […] shouted out his orders […] He was accompanied by a repulsive creature; I believe this woman worked for the criminal police force. Actually she was employed in looting. Reception and unloading these miserable people had to be done with the greatest of speed. I stepped out to help. From within all the commotion […] a young-looking, elegantly dressed woman attracted my attention. She was sitting among all the luggage, her eyes closely following something or other. She didn’t appear sick, not was any sign of disability, and I turned to speak to her […]. She told me that she was the youngest child of Herzl and that she wished to establish contact with the ghetto leadership […] I had no idea that she was suffering from a mental illness, or that she had arrived straight from the Steinhof hospital […]. Very excited that Herzl’s daughter was among them, I hurried to find Jacob Edelstein, head of the Jewish Council, to request that this woman be given special treatment […]. He promised me nothing and, knowing him well, I realized that there was no point pleading with him […] I approached nurse Ilka Tausig, to ask if she could accept her in her ward […]. Over the next few days, I visited her often. She made a sad impression [on me].
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