Inevitably Schwarz became a high priority target for the security services. It is known that he was still at liberty on 25 December 1933. On that date he met with Leo Roth, Siegfried Rädel, Herbert Wehner and Wilhelm Kox. The men, between them, comprised the available members of the underground party leadership for the region. Their objective was to arrange for a rapid reconfiguration of Kippenberger's party intelligence structure. Kippenberger had probably, by this time, fled abroad, as had most of the other leading party figures, apart from those who had already been arrested during 1933. Sources differ over whether it was at the end of December 1933 or during the first part of January 1934 that Rudolf Schwarz was himself captured by the authorities. He was taken to Columbia House which later came to be administered as part of the Concentration Camps Network, but which at this stage was being used as prison accommodation, staffed by Nazi paramilitaries from the SS and the SA. He was subjected to severe interrogation-torture.
