In August, Daniel Stern, accompanied by his wife Ruth, traveled from Israel to place “Stones of Remembrance” at Schlachthausgasse 16 in Vienna’s 3rd district as a way of commemorating the terrible fate of his ancestors. Their trip was supported by the Jewish Welcome Service.
Adele (Etelka) and Wilhelm (Vilmos) Stern came from Hungary to Vienna in 1904, where they moved into an apartment at Schlachthausgasse 16 and set up a household goods store at the same address. Sons Rudolf and Egon were born in 1918 and 1923; father Wilhelm died in 1934.
When the Nazis took power in 1938, the household goods store was “Aryanized” and the apartment expropriated. Adele managed to flee to Zagreb in 1941 – there, however, she was arrested by the Ustaše fascists in 1942 and shortly thereafter deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Egon Stern was deported to Majdanek in May 1942 and murdered just a few months later.
Only Rudolf survived. Following the “Annexation”, he was forced to scrub the streets as part of a ritual humiliation, then imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo for three months, eventually being released upon promising to leave Austria. He fled to Switzerland via Trieste and emigrated to the US with his wife Lily in 1947. Today, their descendants live in the US and Israel.
After the unveiling of the Stones of Remembrance, Daniel “Doni” Stern and his wife visited the current Segal exhibition at Vienna’s District Museum Josefstadt. Doni Stern is related to author Lore Segal via her grandfather.
