The Last Places before Deportation

Kleine Sperlgasse 2a, Castellezgasse 35, Malzgasse 7 and 16 – these addresses in Vienna-Leopoldstadt are practically absent from collective memory.

However, in the topography of the Shoah in Vienna and Austria, these are central locations. In 1941/42, four deportation collection camps were situated at these sites, where Jews were interned before deportation. Groups of approximately 1,000 persons each were transported from here on trucks to the Aspang Railroad Station. From February 1941 to October 1942, a total of 45 deportation trains departed for the ghettoes and death camps. The overwhelming majority of the Austrian Shoah victims were sent from the four collection camps to their death.
The path to annihilation commenced in the very center of the city.

The exhibition site, the Crypt of the Heroes’ Monument, is dedicated to the Austrian soldiers who fell in World War I and II. The exhibition confronts and juxtaposes this ensemble of remembrance with the commemoration of the more than 65,000 Austrian victims of the Holocaust.

Text: Monika Sommer, Heidemarie Uhl