Haggenmüllergasse 25 (laid 2014)

The Hirsch Family

Final Destination: Mauthausen

Sigmund Hirsch, born on May 15, 1887, in Mattersdorf;
Johanna Hirsch, née Löbl, born on August 1, 1901, in Wiener Neustadt;
daughter Gertrude, born 1921 in Wiener Neustadt.
Mother and daughter—and probably also the father—were victims of the Shoah.

Sigmund Hirsch had likely lived in Wiener Neustadt since the end of World War I and worked as a leather and ribbon merchant from 1919. His leather goods store at Neunkirchnerstraße 6 was, alongside the Geist leather goods store, the largest in the city. He was a committee member of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wiener Neustadt, meaning he was part of the administrative body of the Jewish community in the 1930s.

With his wife and daughter Gertrude, he moved to Haggenmüllergasse 25 in 1930.

During the November Pogrom, the Hirsch family was robbed. Among other things, they lost jewelry, ornaments, silverware, and a gramophone. All three family members had to leave the city in November 1938 and afterward lived at various addresses in Vienna.

The business had already been taken from its owner. After the Anschluss, a provisional administrator immediately took over the premises and all the goods. Sigmund Hirsch was not involved in the sales transactions, as he had lost his rights as a Jew. The house of the Jewish couple at Haggenmüllergasse 25 was also “Aryanized.”

Mother and daughter—and probably also the father—are believed to have been killed in Austria, although for Jewish citizens from Wiener Neustadt this is very rarely documented. For the mother, Mauthausen is cited as the place of death. It is unclear whether daughter Gertrude (and her father) also died in this concentration camp.

Werner Sulzgruber