Vienna Jews were subjected today to beatings, enforced physical exercise and drafted to wash automobiles and cafe floors as an anti-Semitic boycott of unprecedented severity spread through the capital of the Reich’s new province.
Directly before the British Consulate-General storm troopers this morning forced Jews to wash a Nazi’s car at least fifty times in the rain until consular officials learned of the events at noon and requested the police to call a halt.
Hundreds of Jews were waiting before the consulate to seek immigration visas as the storm troopers drafted many to wash the car parked directly opposite the building. The consulate henceforth will permit Jews to wait in the courtyard of the building instead of outside.
In two cases the “payiss” (ringlets of hair worn by orthodox Jews on their temples) were cut off Jewish youths after they had finished washing the auto. After the British authorities intervened it was believed likely the storm troopers would no longer operate in that spot.
Throughout the rest of the city, however, reports indicated that the Jew-baiters “Roman holiday” which began Saturday was even greater than at first reported. There was no indication that the Jews were included in an announcement by Joseph Buerckel, newly-appointed Reich commissar for Directing Anschluss, that Chancellor Hitler’s “Easter peace” scheduled to end today had been extended to May 9.
Scores of Jews were rounded up in the Prater, Vienna’s chief amusement center, and forced to go through a series of exercises. Jews were warned they would no longer be tolerated in public playgrounds. In several cafes last night Jewish guests were not only forced to scrubs floors and wash windows, but to do deep knee-bending exercises for twenty minutes. One old man fainted after ten minutes of the work.
An “Aryan” cafe owner was punched by a storm trooper after Jewish guests and newspapers were found on his premises. City-wide reports revealed that many Jews had been punched and kicked. According to the consensus of observers, young brownshirts were freer with their first than the older ones.
HUNDREDS FORCED TO MARCH IN GOOSE-STEP
An enforced goose-step march of hundreds of Jews through Vienna streets was a feature of yesterday’s events. The Jews, who included old men and women and Chief Cantor Fischer of Vienna’s principal synagogue, were marshalled into parade formation and forced to goose-step through the Jewish Quarters, the Praterstrasse and across the Danube Bridge. There they were led through a series of knee-bending exercises.
Jewish guests in a Mariahilferstrasse cafe, one of the few not closed by Nazi storm troopers, were forced to take over the nightly clean-up jobs of waiters, while hundreds craned their necks outside to watch Jews sweep the floors and wash windows. Mothers held up their children for a better view, while police stood by with the crowd, laughing and cheering the proceedings.
Sporadic picketing continued in the boycott of Jewish business launched over the weekend. The Diana Public Baths, Largest in the city, displayed a sign, “Jews Prohibited.” Many Jewish cafes which had closed over the weekend re-opened tonight, but with the race of the owners clearly indicated.
As Jewish merchants predicted a repetition next weekend of the past weekend’s mass picketing campaign, Jewish shop windows, for the first time in a month, were painted with the word “Jude” (Jew) in letters three feet high. In some cases the word “Pig” or a crudely-scrawled six-pointed Jewish star was added.
Nazis responsible for the vandalism did not attempt to hide their work. On the contrary, this afternoon they proceeded from store to store in Vienna’s first District, followed by admiring crowds. Stores which escaped the painting of signs were forced to paste large signs on their windows announcing that they were Jewish.
It was this type of sign that Commissar Buerckel himself had ordered removed from shop windows a week before Chancellor Hitler’s April 10 plebiscite ratifying Austro-German Anschluss.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
