Birth certificate of Lilli Tauber's father, Wilhelm Schischa

This is my father Wilhelm Schischa's birth certificate.

My father was the oldest son from my grandfather's first marriage. He was born in Gloggnitz on 11th October 1883. My father was a master tailor. He opened a menswear shop in Wiener Neustadt, and his master craftsman's certificate was hanging on the wall there. He regularly drove to Vienna to buy clothes from wholesalers, which he then sold in his shop.

He suffered terribly from varicose veins and therefore wasn't recruited to the K&K army during World War I. But he must have been doing something that was connected with the war because he told us about a camp for Russian prisoners of war near Wiener Neustadt. My father had to deliver bread with a cart somewhere and passed by that camp. The prisoners were very hungry, and he always threw a few loaves of bread over the fence for them.

My father's family was very religious, but my father wasn't really that religious himself. He kept the shop open on Saturdays and even smoked on Saturdays. My mother, on the other hand, was very religious. She kept a strict kosher household, we had separate dishes for dairy and meat products and special dishes for Pesach. Apart from that we celebrated all holidays such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and held seder. The shop was closed on high holidays, and we went to the temple.

My father and my mother, Johanna Schischa [nee Friedmann], were deported to Opole ghetto in Poland from Vienna on 26th February 1941 and died a year later in either Belzec or Sobibor concentration camp.

Photos from this interviewee