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 the remaining Jews in Gernany.

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.

The transport left Vienna’s Nordbahnhof (northern railway station) on April 27, 1943 and arrived in Theresienstadt on April 28. It consisted of two Jews. Apparently they were put on a regular passenger train that left daily from Nordbahnhof (Northern Railway Station) and travelled via Breclav (Lundenburg) to Brno (Brünn). In Brno they were transferred to a train run by the "Protektoratsbahnen" (the company that operated trains in the so called "Protektorat"). They continued their journey to Prague (Praha) and from there to Bohusovice (Bauschowitz). At the station in Bohusovice, the Jews were taken off the train and forced to walk about three kilometers to Theresienstadt.

On its arrival, this transport was listed in the ghetto records as IV/14g Ez; the Roman numeral IV represented Vienna as city of origin.

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