The Sussmann Collection comprises part of Heinrich Sussmann’s artistic estate and is kept in the museum’s archive. Born in Ternopil, Ukraine, he came to Vienna as a refugee through the turmoil of the First World War. He studied under architect Oskar Strnad and worked as a set designer and caricaturist in Vienna and Berlin. He and his wife Anni Sussmann were active in the French Resistance during the Second World War. In 1944, both were arrested and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anni and Heinrich Sussmann survived, but their child was murdered. The couple returned to Vienna, where Heinrich Sussmann worked again as a graphic artist. He participated in the “Niemals vergessen” (“Never Forget”) exhibition in 1946 and designed the stained glass windows for the Jewish ceremonial hall at Vienna’s Central Cemetery and for the Austrian National Exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1978. The Jewish Museum has many of his works from his later creative phase.
