Hitlerites Threaten “heads Will Roll”

Two hubdrend and twenly-five thousand Jews living in Austria are confronted today with a crisis which may cost them not only their civil and political rights but, in many parts of this now turbulant country, their lives as well. Their fate hangs on the outcome of the struggle being bitterly waged between the Dollfuss regime and its shifting allies on the side, and the Austrian Nazis with the backing of Germany, no the other.

Jewish circles are watching with gravest anxiety and alarm the developments in the fighe which Chancellor Engelber Dollfuss is tenaciously waging against the Nazis, fearing that if the Nazis obtain power through revolution, Jewish heads roll in revenge for the stubborn support all Austrian Jewry has given to Dollfuss.

Leading political and diplomatic clreles, this correspondent ascertained in a series of interviews, are doubiful that the Dollfuss regime can survive the continual battering to which it is subjected and the defections of large groups of its supporters, despite the optimistic tone of the chancellor’s statement today the goverment “has never been so strong.”

GOVERNMENT DOOMED

Internal intrigues have reached the point where even the most confirmed optimists cannot see how the present government can survive.

The fight for pow r..is now concentrated between the Heimwehr. the Fascist home guard which has the Fascist home guard which has the support of Italy. and the Nazis, who enjoy the support and active backing of Germany. One of the two parties m win and even in the event of victory perching on the Heimwehr banner. Austrian Jews stand to lose because the Heimwehr is strongly injected with anti-Semitic elements.

An undeterined but acknowledgedly large number of disguised Nazis assigned by the Nazi party are members of the Heimwehr ranks and have succeeded in preading anti-Semitism pretty generaily throuphout that organization. Many influential Helmwehr leaders have long been anti-Semitic in their beliefs and utterences and the body as a whole must be considered hostile to the Jews.

ANTI-SEMITISM CERTAIN

Even if, by unexpected developments, the Heimwehr should sueceed in seizing control of the Austrian State and establish a Fascist dictatorship. the Jews must expect to be eliminated from the free professions and made the subject of discriminatory laws. Definile anti-Jewish laws must be expected in the event of a Heimwehr victory affecting also the Jews in {SPAN}..merce{/SPAN}although the depradation of the Jews would probably

The present government, headed by a ???cabinet of personalities??? and deriving its chief support from groups hostile to each other-be-tween which it is torn and racked -Iegally draws no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. But seventy percent of the population, hoever, sympathizes with the Austrian Nazis who openly practice discriminations against Austrian Jews.

Efforts of Jewish leaders to see Chancellor Dollfuss and present the Jewish situation to him from their viewpoint have been uniformly unsuccessful, the chancellor refusing to see all Jewish delegations. It is understood that privately, however, Dollfuss declared that the Jews should feel happy that so far, no specific Jewish question exists in Austria because the government, in its present position, has no time to deal with a Jewish question.

But if the Dollfuss regime continues in power, legal discriminations against the Jews are only a matter of time. The Christian-Social party. a major part of the Dollfuss support, despite the stand taken by the Catholic Bishops condemning Nazi anti-Semitism, has taken a strong stand against the Jews. Leaders of the party such as. Dr. Emmerich Czermak who have preached a program of ???dissimilation??? as opposed to assimilation of the Jews, have recently renewed their demands for discriminatory laws regulating Jewish cultural, professional and commercial activities. With numerous restrictive measures already employed against Jews in the professions, it is reliably learned that the goverment has already prepared a number of anti-Jewish laws and projects as a sop to the extremists in the goverment ranks.

Whatever the personal attitude of members of the Dullfuss cabinet, it is evident here on the scene that the government will unhesitatingly make anti-Semitism one of its fundamental planks if by so doing it can deprive the Nazi movement of some of its popular appeal and can strengthen its hold on its followers.