A couple weeks before its final liquidation in September 1943, they – along with a few hundred other Jews from the ghetto – escaped by obtaining permits to work in Karl Plagge's hastily expanded HKP 562 forced labor camp on Subačiaus Street in Vilnius.

Yet Plagge and his more benevolent officers could not avert the final outcome: Most of the Jewish workers of the HKP were murdered – mainly by Ukrainian and Estonian SS forces – in July 1944, before Soviet troops occupied Vilna/Vilnius.

Schwartzberg, with wife and son, survived by switching to new hiding places during the night – as their previous hideouts got discovered, and pursuing forces murdered Jews they caught.

After the Nazi genocide in Lithuania, Vilna Jewish society – and the community that had nurtured Schwartzberg – no longer existed.

Another calculation in Schwartzberg's decision to leave his hometown of Vilna was to avoid the Soviets’ forced migration east of many people – including surviving Jews – from Lithuania.