Kaiserbrunngasse 17 (laid 2011)

Wilhelm and Johanna Schischa

Into the Ghetto and Further into the Extermination Camp

Wilhelm Schischa, born October 11, 1883, in Gloggnitz,
Johanna Schischa, née Friedmann, born May 19, 1885, in Prein/Rax.
Deported to Opole on February 26, 1941; murdered in Belzec or Sobibor extermination camp.
Son Eduard and daughter Karoline („Lilly“) survived.

Wilhelm Schischa was born in Gloggnitz. His father ran a clothing trade in Neunkirchen.

At a Purim ball in Neunkirchen, he met Johanna Friedmann from Prein an der Rax, whom he married in 1908. Wilhelm Schischa became a master tailor and, after the wedding, opened a men’s clothing store at Domplatz 3 in Wiener Neustadt.

In 1914, they had their first child, Eduard, who, after completing his schooling, began a tailoring apprenticeship, which he completed with the journeyman’s examination. Now he could work in his father’s business. When the mother was already 42 years old, they had a second child in 1927, whom they named Karoline. The family had a house with a garden in Wiener Neustadt at Kaiserbrunngasse 17.

With the „Anschluss“ (annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany) everything changed for the family. Their daughter Karoline remembers it vividly. From that day on, her Christian friends no longer wanted to know anything about her, which, of course, she could not understand at all. The business was Aryanized, and Wilhelm Schischa was advised to sell his house. Their son Eduard was able to flee to Palestine in October 1938 on an illegal transport.

Then came the Reichspogromnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Karoline, the daughter, reports in her notes about the day after: „On November 10, it was a Thursday, we were sent home again in the morning (by the Jewish teacher). Around eleven o’clock, the doorbell rang, and the Gestapo arrested my father. My mother, who was, of course, completely desperate, went to Mrs. Gerstl, whose husband had also been arrested. All the Jewish men had been arrested. As we were on our way home near our house, we saw SA men ransacking our house. Everything was stolen, we were never allowed to enter our house again. They took us to the synagogue. All the Jewish women and children from Wiener Neustadt and the surrounding area were already gathered there. The women were searched for money and jewelry and had to hand everything over; everything was simply stolen from them.“

Karoline came on a children’s transport and survived in England. Wilhelm and Johanna also tried to leave Austria, but they could not do so due to lack of funds. From September 1940 to February 1941, Wilhelm was still able to work in an Aryanized women’s and men’s clothing factory in Vienna. On February 21, the Schischa couple was then deported with a large transport to the ghetto in Opole, Poland.

Daughter Karoline, who later married Max Tauber and still lives in Vienna today, owns a number of letters from her parents that they had sent to various relatives and that were handed over to her – collected after the war – in a small leather suitcase by an aunt.

In these letters, her father wrote about the terrible living conditions in the ghetto but also expressed the initial hope for an early reunion with the family at home. The later letters then reflect the increasing fears and the utter hopelessness in the face of the future.

In the spring of 1942, the liquidation of the ghetto of Opole began through transports to the extermination camps Belzec and Sobibor. Wilhelm and Johanna Schischa were murdered in one of the two.

Tanja Eckstein (Centropa, based on personal records of the daughter Karoline Tauber in Vienna in November 2010)

The stones were sponsored by the 4th grade classes of the private NMS Sta. Christiana Wr. Neustadt, 2010/11 year, as part of a project.

Images: Wilhelm Schischa, Johanna Schischa (© Centropa)