Leather luggage tag used by an Austrian Jewish refugee

Otto Schick was born on October 20, 1907, in Vienna, Austria. His father, David, was a mailman and died in 1916. His mother was Malvine Winternitz; he had two sisters, Ernestine and Olga. Otto worked as a metal worker in Vienna, fabricating metals parts for farm machinery and dairy equipment. In March 1938, the Anschluss occurred and Austria became part of Nazi Germany. Sometime that year, Otto joined an underground vigilante group that planned to assassinate Hitler. For eleven months, his family never knew where he was, what he did, or if he was dead or alive. He never talked about his activities during that period.

His mother had a relative, Gustav Winternitz, a doctor in New York City, who agreed to sponsor the family and file an affidavit of support for their immigration visas to the United States. Otto received his visa in April-May 1940 and prepared to leave immediately for New York. Malvine and Olga also received their completed paperwork and were to follow two weeks later. Otto went to Genoa, Italy, to board the ship, the Conte de Savoia, and during the boarding process, heard rumors that this was the last ship that would be going to the United States. He arrived in New York on May 23, 1940. He made persistent efforts to try to get his family out. At some point, he learned that his mother and sister, Olga, never escaped Vienna and were deported to a concentration camp where they perished. Ernestine survived and got married. She died in Vienna on January 5, 1962.

Otto married sometime between 1940-1943. In January 1944, he joined the US Army and became a naturalized citizen that April. He was a member of Company "M", 6th ASFTR, and served as a guard at an internment camp in Modesto, CA, during the war. He was honorably discharged in April 1945. Otto later settled in Philadelphia and had one daughter.