During the fall-winter months of 1942-1943 Nazi Germany suffered its first major military defeats in several theaters of the war: The defeat at El Alamein, followed by the landing of Allied forces in North- Africa (Operation Torch) and the encircling of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad signaled a possible shift in the course of the war. However, despite these setbacks the Nazis proceeded with the extermination policies. On February 7, 1943, several days after the German surrender at Stalingrad, Hitler addressed a group of Gauleiters (district party leaders) assembled at Rastenburg. He repeated his threat that Jewry must be eliminated from Europe.
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From January 1943 onwards, Auschwitz- Birkenau and Theresienstadt were the main destination of transports from the German Reich. The Gestapo increased its efforts to seize and deport Jews remaining in Germany.

After the mass deportations of 1942, 8,000 Jews remained in Vienna (Wien). On October 10, 1942, Alois Brunner, head of Central office for Jewish Immigration, informed Dr. Löwenherz that the Jewish Community, which still had formal legal status, would be dissolved. The Jewish population would be represented by a Jewish Council (“Ältestenrat der Juden in Wien”). All Jews residing in Vienna, including Christians of Jewish origin referred to this council.

The Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna gradually began to narrow its activity. On July 6, 1942, it moved its headquarters to the Jewish community’s building on Castellezgasse 35, which previously served as a collection point for deportees. At that time, the majority of personnel of the central office had been sent to other European countries to arrange deportations of Jews from these areas to extermination camps. In October 1942, its name was altered to Abwicklungstelle für jüdische Auswanderung. In the beginning of 1943 the Central Office for Jewish Emigration was dissolved, and the local Gestapo was assigned to supervise the remaining Jews in Vienna. The Gestapo deported about 3,000 Jews between 1943 and 1945.

Transport No. 46f left Vienna’s (Northern Railway Station) on March 30, 1943, and arrived in Theresienstadt on April 1. It consisted of 101 Jews. The average age of the deportees was 47. 36 of them were over 61.

Among the deportees were several prominent members of the Jewish community, including Oberst (Colonel) Hermann Ferdinand Hostovsky of the Austrian military, who had fought on the front lines during World War I and Gisela Wiese, widow of the former president of the Viennese locksmiths union.

Three policemen, Anton Huber, Karl Ruzek and Rudolf Seidler, under the command of an officer (Meister der Schutzpolizei) named Max Beutel were assigned to guard the deportees during the journey.They were instructed to report at the station's post ramp at 3:00, and await the deportees.

Due to the small number of deportees, the security police (Sipo) in Vienna ordered only a few train cars, which were attached to passenger train no. 723 that left daily at 6 PM from Nordbahnhof and traveled via Breclav (Lundenburg) to Brno (Brünn). In Brno, the cars were disengaged and reattached to a train of the "Protektoratsbahnen" (the company that operated trains in the so called "Protektorat") destined for Prague (Praha). From Prague it went to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz). At the station in Bohusovice, the Jews were taken off the train and forced to walk about three kilometers to Theresienstadt.

Upon arrival, the transport was listed in the ghetto records as IV/14f. The Roman numeral IV represented Vienna as city of origin.

At the end of World War II, around 5,000 Jews remained in Vienna.

Excerpts form the personal memories of Olga and Luise Liebstöckl:
Mother and I became numbers, IV/14f 417, 418, outcasts of society, we were part of a transport [...] For my final arrest, Brunner II sent a man as tall as a tree [...] We were driven alone in a truck through the streets at 11:00 o’clock at night. Apparently we were “favored“ by Brunner. The others were crowded together in a truck, just as I often saw as I looked out the window on sleepless nights at the human cargo passing by our house in moonlight.
Now came our turn to enter the transit camp, where we were told that we were going to Theresienstadt […] Following a 40 hour journey in car attached to freight trains, without water or light, we arrived utterly exhausted in Theresienstadt. The SS inspected us that means robed us, and then we entered this bizarre city in which we would reside for 2 and half years. My first impression was a cloud of dust; in which a human stream flowed.
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