Wiener Straße 65 (laid in 2013)
Sr. Anna Caroline (Anna Schwarz)
The nun was murdered in Hartheim
Anna Schwarz, born on 22 June 1876 in Stickelberg, municipality of Hollenthon, nun.
From 1935 she was in the Mauer-Öhling institution, from where she was transported on 7 August 1941 to Hartheim and murdered there.
Anna Schwarz came from humble circumstances. In 1900, she was consecrated as a nun of the convent Sta. Christiana in Frohsdorf and received the religious name Anna Caroline. In the early 1920s she was in Alsace for training, where she already had health problems.
On the order of the District Authority of Wiener Neustadt, she was admitted to the Steinhof institution at the beginning of 1928 due to persecutory delusions, and shortly afterwards transferred to the Mauer-Öhling nursing institution. The medical records describe her as calm, compliant, and cheerful. By mid-1932, she was released into home care at the convent in Frohsdorf.
Soon afterwards she was again able to continue her service at the Sta. Christiana convent school in Wiener Neustadt. In 1935, at the instigation of the Wiener Neustadt health office, she was once more admitted to the institution. She was still there when, in June 1940, within the framework of “Aktion T4”, a panel of doctors appeared at the institution and sent registration forms about all patients to Berlin. On this basis, life-or-death was decided in assembly line fashion. The life of Sr. Anna Caroline was deemed “unworthy of life”.
On 7 August 1941, the grey buses arrived and took her along with another 58 victims in the last transport before Hitler’s temporary halt of the Aktion, to the killing center at Hartheim Castle. All were murdered in the gas chamber.
Anton Blaha
Teaching Sister (© Chronicle of the Sisters of Sta. Christiana)