The Jewish Museum Vienna is presenting in its Project Space a filmic documentation of a post‑1945 hideout built by Holocaust survivor Emmerich Grünwald. Supplemented by interviews, the museum embarks on a search for traces of a generation that could not forget the traumas of persecution, deportation, and concentration camps.
The radio technician Emmerich Grünwald (1896–1958) was deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1942, which he survived despite a physical disability. After World War Two, he was restituted the store in Vienna’s ninth district that had been stolen from him by the Nazi regime. At Schlickgasse 4, he built an “escape room.” It lay between his apartment and the store below and was accessible via a hidden staircase beneath a wardrobe. The room was outfitted with a kitchen and equipment for listening to music, including a radio, shellac records, and a recording device. In times of psychological distress, this room became a place of retreat and refuge for the traumatized Holocaust survivor. In 1958, Emmerich Grünwald committed suicide in the room above. As the “escape room” had to be demolished for structural reasons, the Jewish Museum Vienna and the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance decided to document this hidden space.
