Aspangbahnhof station to ghettos set up in eastern Europe, including the Litzmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto.
The Schwarz couple were deported to Litzmannstadt on 28 October 1941 in transport no. 9. They arrived the following day, 29 October, in a group of 1,000 people as the fourth transport from Vienna to the ghetto. According to their declarations, they brought RM95 with them (not much, considering that RM100 was the maximum amount allowed for entry per person. Like other displaced persons from various cities in the Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, nearly 20,000 persons in total were sent to collective housing known as "collectives". They were colloquially named after the newcomers' place of origin and transport number. The collective "Vienna IV" was located in two houses at Limanowskiego Street (Alexanderhofstrasse) 25 and 45 (part of these buildings still exist to date). The sanitary and living conditions in the communal quarters were terrible even when compared to the prevailing conditions in the entire ghetto. Permission was only given to move out to separate flats after some time. The Schwarz family took advantage of this opportunity by moving to Brzezińska Street (Sulzfelderstrasse) 35 flat 11 (currently Wojska Polskiego Street) on 29 January 1942. They were not the only tenants; other Viennese occupied the room with them: Seraphine Schindler and Kurt Schick with two children: Igor and Trude.
Initially, they had difficulties finding employment, as did other displaced persons. It was due to unfamiliarity with local realities and the Yiddish or Polish language. Surviving documentation shows that Anni was a housewife before the war while Erich worked as a design engineer. They were, however, in a fortunate situation as they were young (Anni was 31 and Erich 47) compared to the other deportees from Vienna (more than 40% of whom were over 60 years old). Unfortunately, their fate in the ghetto remains unknown; they probably experienced the same ordeal as the newly resettled population.
A few weeks after arriving at the ghetto in January 1942, mass deportations of its inhabitants commenced to the extermination camp in Chełmno on the Ner. Western European Jews were left out in the first few months. It was finally decided that they would join the ranks of the deportees in the last operation between 4 and 15 May 1942. Anni and Erich Schwarz were also on the penultimate transport on 14 May. They were deported and then murdered in the extermination camp in Chełmno on the Ner.
The story of the victims is intertwined with the suitcase. The circumstances of its discovery beg the question of how it ended up in this location. It can be assumed that it was deposited intentionally by the owners themselves. The tenement housed a tailoring establishment where Anni may have found employment later on. Thus, she likely hid the suitcase that she couldn't carry on her further journey into the unknown. Officially, luggage up to 12.5 kg was permitted, but in practice, it was often confiscated at the assembly points or before entering the wagons at the Radegast station. During the deportation in May 1942, the seizure of all baggage became commonplace. Information regarding this practice reached those waiting to be referred for displacement. It is thus possible that they abandoned some of their possessions in this manner. It also happened that people sent for deportation were sent back from the concentration points to the ghetto (in this way, some of them avoided deportation), while their personal belongings were often forfeited. Hiding the suitcase may have served the purpose of protecting possessions from looting (in the absence of their owners). Therefore, the concealment of the suitcase may have served to protect their possessions from being plundered (in the absence of the owners). And if they didn't do it themselves, then did the concealment of the suitcase have anything to do with an attempt to hide for the duration of the displacement. Another unanswered question is how the chest remained in this location for over sixty years until its discovery. Dworska Street (known before the war as ul. Organizacji WiN) was a busy ghetto "arterial road" with several institutions of significance to ghetto life. Oskar Singer, one of the chroniclers of the ghetto, referred to it as the "heart" of the ghetto district. The number of people who could have access to the rooms was considerably high - as was the case in the post-war period.
Currently, this building is displayed at the Radegast Station Branch, embodying the thousands of stories behind each of the victims deported to the Holocaust.