For the Schwartzbergs and other surviving Jews, the subsequent Soviet occupation was a liberation. Yet Vilnius/Vilna, before the German invasion, was populated mainly by ethnic Poles and Jews. After the Nazi genocide in Lithuania, Vilna Jewish society — and the community that had nurtured Schwartzberg — no longer existed. So, after the Schwartzbergs recuperated — and as the Red Army proceeded westward towards Berlin — Schwartzberg and his family also left Vilnius and moved west. They arrived in Szczecin, Poland, and then — three weeks after the German capitulation — in Berlin.