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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On May 21, 1943, Rolf Günther, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in Department IVB4, informed all local police headquarters that Heinrich Himmler had ordered the completion of the evacuation of all Jews from the Greater Reich and the Protectorate to the East (Auschwitz-Birkenau) and Theresienstadt, by June 30, 1943. The new regulations permitted the deportation of ill and handicapped Jews, as well Jews who were still employed by the war industry, and employees of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden (Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany), and its representatives in various communities. Jews married to non-Jews were exempt from deportation.

Transport No. 46m left Vienna’s Nordbahnhof (Northern Railway Station) on November 30, 1943, and arrived in Theresienstadt on December 1. It consisted of 43 Jews. The average age of the deportees was 47. Four of them were over 61.

Due to the small number of deportees, the security police (Sipo) in Vienna ordered train cars, which were attached to passenger train No. 723 that left daily at 6 PM from Nordbahnhof and travelled 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 there, the journey continued to Theresienstadt.

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