Some time after the anti-Jewish outbreak which occurred to-day in connection with the opening of the new City Council and the Vienna State Parliament (reported in yesterday’s J.T.A. Bulletin) had been put down by the police, groups of Nazis managed to reorganise and broke into several of the Jewish streets. The Jews hurriedly closed their shops, and put up a determined resistance, driving back the aggressors.
The meetings of both the City Council and the Diet were converted by the Hitlerists into anti-Jewish demonstrations. Several of the leaders of the Socialists happen to be Jews, and the Hitlerists kept up a continuous stream of abuse against them, calling them flat-footed Asiatics, and shouting "Dirty Jews, go to Palestine!".
In the Vienna Diet, the storm was directed mainly against Dr. Danneberg, a Jew, who is one of the Socialist leaders and is the President of the Diet, and Deputy Breitner, also a Jew, who is the Socialist Minister of Finance of the Vienna State Government. The positions held by these two Jews, the Hitlerists alleged, shows how Vienna is under Jewish domination.
Similar scenes took place in the Lower Austrian Diet, although there are no Jewish Deputies at all there.
The Nazis also abused the Christian Socialist members of the Vienna City Council, including several Catholic priests, calling them pseudo-Christians, who were in fact the serving the ends of world Jewry.
In both the Vienna City Council and the Vienna State Diet, the Nazis presented motions for the disfranchisement of all Jews and people of alien blood, the cancellation of their citizenship, the withdrawal of their right of residence, and the withdrawal of all licences and permits for pursuing any kind of employment.
Dr. Danneberg, the Jewish President of the Vienna Diet, assured the Nazi fraction that he would present their motion for the withdrawal of the citizenship rights of all Jews to the President of the Vienna State.
The Nazi motion in question demands (1) that the State Governments should cancel the citizenship of all Jews; (2) that the State Governments should not issue any further citizenship papers to Jews and to people of alien race; (4) that the State Governments should not issue any trading licences to Jews or people of alien race, and should not permit existing licences to be transferred to Jews; (5) that the Mayors of the various towns should prevent Jews engaging in any sort of employment, refusing to license any workshop for Jewish industrialists or artisans, and refusing to issue any kind of certificate to Jews to enable them to engage in any kind of work or occupation, profession or business, so that there should be more employment for our own people.
The resolutions are regarded as only of a demonstrative character, because there are very few Hitlerists in the Vienna City Council and the Vienna Diet, their recent victory being that they obtained some representation where they had previously been completely unrepresented, and in the Federal Parliament there are no Hitlerists at all.
The newly-formed Federal Government under the Premiership of Dr. Dollfuss, is, however, of a strongly antisemitic character, and the two Heimwehr Ministers hold similar views on the Jewish question to those of the Nazis.
In addition, the increasing popularity of antisemitic slogans had led to a revival of antisemitism in the Christian Socialist Party, which though originally formed as an antisemitic Party has in recent years moderated its antisemitism, and in office has repeatedly declared that as a Government it recognises no distinctions between citizens. Some of the Christian Socialist Deputies are urging a return now to militant antisemitism to maintain the Party in popular favour.
With the resignation this week on account of age of Deputy Leopold Kunschak, a personal friend of the founder of the party, the late Mr. Karl Lueger, from the position of chairman of the Christian Socialist Party in Vienna, which he has held for many years, Professor Dr. Robert Krasser, has been elected Party leader in Vienna, and in the course of his acceptance speech to the Party Conference, he urged a revival of the original antisemitic programme of the Party.
It was antisemitism, he said, which inspired the masses with enthusiasm and enabled our Party under Dr. Lueger to conquer Vienna. For State political reasons the Christian Socialist Party put the soft pedal on this question of antisemitism, with the result that the Party has lost its popular agitation slogans, and has fallen under suspicion of being a defender of capital and of the banks. We are now witnessing in consequence the strange sight of the Christian Socialist Party being made responsible for all the ugly things that are done by the Jewish and freethinking financial world.
Christian Socialist antisemitism must distinguish itself from the race antisemitism of the National Socialists, Professor Krassarr went on. Lueger’s antisemitism was moderate, but it gave our people immunity against the disruptive Jewish spirit.
Professor Krasser concluded by warning the Christian Socialist Party that it must not go into battle against Nazism. Our fight, he said, is only against Marxism.
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