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Dachau Deaths Mount As Vienna Seizures Continue

June 13, 1938
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The number of known deaths among the several hundred Jews shipped to the Dachau concentration camp rose to seven today, while further arrests of Jews on the streets continued in several scattered districts.

A woman named Lazarus whose three sons had been sent to Dachau received a curt notice that one of them, 22 years old, had been buried. It was also announced that George Klipert, 30, who was arrested a fortnight ago, had died. Five other deaths were reported previously.

Meanwhile, the arrest of Moritz Oesterreicher and his son was revealed. Oesterreicher was the head of the jewelry firm which supplied King Zog of Albania with the diadem worn by his bride at their recent wedding. It was reliably indicated that Jewish jewelers have been hard hit by recent mass seizures, with an estimated 90 per cent of them under arrest. It is certainly true that many Jewish jewelry shops now display signs announcing that they are “Aryan enterprises.”

Postcards from new arrivals at Dachau began to dribble through the mails, dispelling any doubts as to the fate of several hundred of the many Jews arrested in the past fortnight. For the most part, the carefully censored cards merely state that the writers are well and could use small sums of money.

Aside from the omnipresent threat of internment in Dachau facing every Jew under 50 years of age, Jewish morale suffered increasingly in the past week from the tyranny of small chieftains of the Nazi Party and Storm Troops, who continually harass Jews in their districts.

For example, Jews were repeatedly chased off sidewalks on the Wallensteinstrasse in the Jewish quarter and forced to walk in the roadway. Signs erected in Turkenschanz Park barring Jews and designating “ghetto benches” on the popular Elisabeth Promenade do not bear the insignia of the Nazi Party nor of the authorities, but they have not been ordered removed by official sources.

On several occasions Jews were chased out of other parks, notably Quay Park along the Danube Canal, by storm troopers and youths wearing swastika armbands. During the week one paper with a large circulation demanded jim-crow cars for Jews in the city tramway system. While it is not believed that this proposal has official support, the publication of the demand in a popular paper is taken as indication of the temper of the Austrian Nazis.

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