Memorial Plate for the Holding Facility for 40,000 Jewish Women and Jews

The memorial plaque was installed on October 25, 1984, on the façade of a former collection camp at Kleine Sperlgasse 2a. In the school building, the "Central Office for Jewish Emigration" of the NS regime held approximately 45,000 Jewish women and men between October 1941 and March 1943, before deporting them to extermination camps. Several sources document the poor conditions in the collection camp and also the despair of the interned, some of whom committed suicide in the camp. One of the most striking sources is the poem by the Holocaust survivor Otto Kalwo (1918–2008), who also briefly worked as a Jewish "orderly" in the camp. After the closure of the collection camp with the end of deportations in October 1942, the building was assigned to the girls' elementary school at Kleine Pfarrgasse 33 and the boys' elementary school at Leopoldsgasse 3. Renovation work began in early 1943. On August 28, 1943, instruction at Kleine Sperlgasse 2a was resumed as a public school of the city of Vienna. The building is today a public elementary school. The plaque was sponsored by the school community and the association of friends of Leopoldstadt.