The initiative to carry out deportations of Austrian Jews from Vienna to the »General Gouvernement« in former Poland already in early 1941, came from the new Reich Governor Baldur von Schirach. Thus, he met the wish of the Viennese NSDAP to have Jewish apartments vacated. Hitler’s consent to the deportations reached Schirach in a letter from the head of the Reich chancellery of 3 December 1940. Although Hitler had authorized the expulsion of 60,000 persons, the organizers discontinued this program after five transports. The more than 5000 victims of these mass deportations from Vienna were scattered throughout the Polish towns of Opole, Kielce, Modliborzyce, Lagow, and Opatow and sent to the local ghettos.

As a result of insufficient food supply and poor accomodation, mortality was on a rapid rise among the elderly and sick deportees. They were left to themselves, except for some classified as »fit for work,« who were employed in labor camps by the SS. Most of the men, women, and children deported from Vienna in February/March 1941 fell victim to the »combing-out actions,« which were carried out in spring and summer of 1942 in the Polish ghettos, and killed in the extermination camps of »Operation Reinhard.«