During the spring-summer months of 1943, Nazi Germany suffered a series of defeats in several theaters of war: in May, German forces in North Africa surrendered. In July, Following the failure of "Operation Citadel" (Battle of Kursk), the Soviet counteroffensive on the Eastern Front began. Almost, simultaneously, an allied force landed in Sicily and Benito Mussolini, the leader of fascist Italy, Germany’s ally, was dismissed. Over the course of the summer, the Allied aerial attack on the German home front and industrial centers intensified. Despite these events, German authorities continued to deport the Jews, who still resided in the Reich, to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz Birkenau.
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The transport departed from Linz on September 15, 1943, and arrived in Theresienstadt on September 16. It consisted of one Jewish woman, the widow of a former "Aryan" CEO of Hermann Göring Werke, one of the largest corporate companies in the Third Reich. She was deported to Theresienstadt despite the fact that her husband had been killed on the Eastern front.
It is not known whether she was driven directly from Linz to Theresienstadt. In most cases, small groups of deportees were sent first to Vienna, where they were put on passenger train No. 723 that left daily at 6 PM from the 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 Theresienstadt.
The transport was listed in the ghetto records as IV/14m Ez. The Roman numeral IV represented Vienna as city of origin.
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