Neunkirchner Straße 52 (laid in 2022)
Frieda and Jakob Schwarz
The search for help in their hometown led to death
Frieda Schwarz, born on January 30, 1899, in Sopron (Ödenburg)
Sons Jakob, born on December 16, 1921, and Adolf, born on April 20, 1936, both in Wiener Neustadt.
The Schwarz family was deported to the Litzmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto on November 2, 1941. Son Jakob managed to escape from the ghetto and returned to Wiener Neustadt. He was betrayed, arrested by the police on January 9, 1942, deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp on April 11, 1942, and murdered there on June 23, 1942. The rest of the family did not survive.
The address Neunkirchner Straße 52 was home to several Jewish families. Among them, before 1938, was also the Schwarz family: the twins Ludwig and Frieda Schwarz, born on January 30, 1899, in Sopron (Ödenburg), and their brother Heinrich, born on February 3, 1904, likewise in Sopron. We know that Heinrich earned his living as a commercial clerk, while his brother Ludwig truly made bread, as a trained baker at the local Anker bread factory. Frieda raised two sons, both born in Wiener Neustadt: Jakob in 1921 and Adolf in 1936.
Frieda’s elder son Jakob worked as a laborer in his youth. After the upheaval of 1938 and the family’s expulsion from Wiener Neustadt, he was deported with his mother on November 2, 1941, from Vienna to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. The desperate situation there drove him to attempt escape and return to the so-called “Ostmark”—a rare and highly dangerous undertaking during this time. Instead of disappearing into the anonymity of a big city, his search for food and shelter led him back to his birthplace, likely in the hope of finding people who would not betray him and might help him. The opposite was the case: the police arrested him in Wiener Neustadt on January 8, 1942. Jakob Schwarz’s attempt to survive in hiding as an “U-boat” was even commented on in the local Nazi paper Volksruf, which branded him an “undesirable returnee” and referred to his “transfer to a concentration camp”—a veiled expression for renewed deportation. In fact, he was transported to Mauthausen concentration camp on April 11, 1942. He and his mother, Frieda Schwarz, were among the victims of the Shoah.
Werner Sulzgruber
According to registration forms and the DÖW database, Frieda’s mother Johanna Schwarz (*1866) and Frieda’s twin brother Ludwig (*1899) also lived in the household. All three were deported on the same transport to Litzmannstadt and likewise became victims of the Shoah.