The victim groups

Map of Jewish retirement homes and orphanages

Children’s homes, orphanages and retirement homes in Vienna

While some, primarily younger Jews managed to flee abroad, there were two groups among the victims of persecution who were particularly vulnerable to National Socialist oppression. On the one hand, there were mainly older people who were unable to flee due to their financial and/or health situation and who were left without care or dependent on help.[5] On the other hand, Jewish orphans and children in care were also defenceless against the National Socialist reprisals. In addition to the inability of these two groups of victims to organise their own escape abroad or into hiding places, the transports to Maly Trascjanec could already be more dangerous for children and older persons than for other victims. Even if they had survived to Minsk, they were then ineligible for use in forced labour around the extermination camp, which is why arrival after deportation usually meant immediate murder for these two groups of victims, provided they had survived the hardships of the transport.[6]

Until Austria's annexation to the "German Reich" in March 1938, the Jewish religious community operated 12 children's homes and orphanages in Vienna. However, as early as 1938 and 1939 most of them were closed and in some cases converted into retirement homes of the IKG. The emergency situation was compounded by the fact that the municipal children's homes in Vienna no longer accepted Jewish children in their facilities in 1939 and even expelled them. For this reason, more Jewish children had to be admitted to the children's homes of the IKG.[7] After October 1942 there was only one IKG children's home, which looked after a few Jewish children until the end of the war.[8]

In contrast to the declining number of children in orphanages, the number of Jewish retirement and nursing homes and the number of people cared for in them increased significantly after the "Anschluss". This had to do on the one hand with the emigration of younger family members who had usually taken care of nursing and welfare, and on the other hand with the systematic disenfranchisement of the Jewish population, who were thus forced into precarious situations. The situation in the retirement and nursing homes was characterised by overwork of the nursing staff; there were many more requests than available nursing places, and the homes were dissolved by the deportations that gradually took place.[9]