Seegasse and Malzgasse – Two streets in Vienna as Focal Point of Jewish Care for the Elderly between Dissolution, Concentration and Deportation

After the Nazi takeover, many elderly people were left without care, as their relatives had fled the country. The official Jewish community organization in Vienna tried to create additional space and new facilities in order to cater to the elderly, since the Jewish old-age home at Seegasse 9 was hopelessly overcrowded. Therefore, existing institutions—among them two Jewish schools in Malzgasse—were converted into retirement homes. During the mass deportations, several temporary “housing communities” had to be created for elderly people. Many had been rounded up together with their families yet were deferred from the transports until the onset of deportations to Theresienstadt, the so-called Altersghetto (“ghetto for the elderly”), in June 1942. In these “housing communities” the elderly found themselves in crowded conditions, awaiting their impending deportation. Together with the provisional retirement homes, these spaces were to constitute waystations on the path to annihilation.