Austrian Trend Blasts Hopes of Jewry

(The following is the first of a series of seven articles, “The Truth About the Jews in Europe,” by Engene Lyons, noted correspondent, who is now conducting on investigatory tour of Europe for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The series will appear in the Jewish Daily Bulletin daily. Subsequent, articles will deal further with Austria and with Germany and Russia.)

A few days after the Heimwehr, army and police had trapped and slaughtered the Social-Democrats in their communal houses, I heard the little Christian Social chancellor of Austria, Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss, explain and justify his government’s brutality. A sanctimonious little man, thin-lipped, with a pulpit manner, he tried to turn the events of the tragic week into a “socialist revolt” for a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Let not the blood-letting be in vain, he pleaded. Now that the “bestial Social-Democrats” had been eliminated, everybody must work together for peace and loving kindness.

“Bravo! bravo!” the assembled Austrian journalists mumbled at the proper points. It was like a chorus of pious “amens” in a dull sermon.

Most of those journalists were Jews. The crushing of the Social-Democracy means for most of them the tightening of racial discriminations which they already feel. Whatever they may think of the socialists they cannot but recognize that the victory of Fascism in Austria–whether of the Italian or the German variety–will bring open and onerous anti-Semitism in its train.

CLING TO DOLLFUSS

Their “bravos” were a sad symbol of the strangling political vise in which middle-class Austrian Jews have been caught. Theirs is a choice between what one might call the moderate anti-Semitism of the Christian Social Fascists, modelled on Mussolini’s system, and the extreme anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Desperately they cling to the Dollfuss arm of the cruel vise in the delusion that the squeezing will be less painful.

Not many days before I had had occasion to talk to Jewish newspapermen in Germany: those who, because of service in the trenches in the World War, or because their specialized knowledge is indispensable, are still working on Nazified newspapers. It is their task day after day to shout hallelujah to a regime which persecutes and humiliates them. They must report speeches in which hatred of the Jews finds obscene expression and describe the “triumphs of the Nazi revolution” in expelling gifted Jews from hospitals and universities.

The German journalists in this plight were fully aware of the horror of their position. They were caught and could only smile to hide their bitterness. To hear several scores of their Austrian colleagues mumbling “bravos” on the very edge of the same abyss, therefore, struck me as a pitiful summary of the tragic hopelessness of Jewry in Central Europe today.

Nowhere in Dr. Dollfuss’s long speech–it was his first public appearance after the sanguinary events of February 13, 14 and 15–was there a direct reference to the Jews or a direct expression of anti-Semitism. But his repeated references to the “independent Christian Austria” which he envisioned for his country had in it an ominous ring.

PARTY ANTI-SEMITIC

The party of Dollfuss, holding a precarious balance of power among the Fascist factions, has never masked its anti-Semitism. The fear of unfavorable impressions abroad, and in particular the desire to give no encouragement to Hitler’s forces, obliged Dollfuss and his immediate associates to curb this sentiment so far as official expressions are concerned. But unofficial leaders of the party, its right wing, have been far less circumspect.

The Dollfuss speech was delivered on a Saturday night. It fairly dripped with the milk of human kindness. The families of the heroes who fell in defending the fatherland against Bolshevism would be provided for–the chancellor himself was undertaking that responsibility. And even the families of those “deluded workers” who lost their lives on the other side of the battle would be cared for–Madame Dollfuss, the chancellor’s wife, acting on the suggestion of the Archbishop, was undertaking that responsibility. In general, it was “the saddest week of his life.” He all but wept.

On Sunday morning the same native and foreign journalists listened to a further explanation by the Vice-Chancellor, Major Emil Fey, head of the Heimwehr. It is an open secret that Major Fey had precipitated the bloody attack on the Social-Democrats while Dr. Dollfuss was in Budapest. In the three critical days, indeed, the chancellor had been very much in the background, from whence he emerged only after he had fully accepted and associated himself with the bloody business as a fait-accompli.

FEY IN THE OPEN

Major Fey’s speech was easier to swallow. In uniform, surrounded by uniformed men, the picture was less hypocritical. He had no need for the synthetic milk of human kindness. There was iron in his voice and in his words. Without saying it in so many words, his whole manner implied that with the destruction of Social Democracy by bayonets, Austrian Fascism was safely established. There was little of Dollfuss’s apologia for the blood-letting, but rather pride in the havoc wrought by his howitzers. What he was chiefly interested to establish was that his noble Heimwehr troops had done more slaughter than either the army or the police.

Once more the Jewish journalists assembled there said “amen” to the Fascist rulers. They knew that Major Fey, a thick-set, heavy-featured military man, was the real “hero” of the moment, and might easily become Austria’s Mussolini. That morning’s papers announced that Admiral Horthy, Hungarian Regent, had awarded the Heimwehr leader the highest Hungarian honors–no doubt the bombardment of the besieged workers and the hanging of wounded captives struck a responsive chord in Horthy’s memory of his own rise to power.

Major Fey, too, steered clear of the Jewish problem, contending himself with the promise of a Christian State. He is aware that the rank and file of his supporters are anti-Semitic and that as soon as he has gathered the reigns of power in his own fists–if ever he does–he would have to feed their prejudice and their hunger for jobs now held by Jews.

WOULD HAVE DELICATE TASK

But his task in that connection would be a more delicate one than Hitler’s. His wife is a Jewess, it is generally believed. There are Jews among his financial backers: people who preferred a weaker Austrian Fascist dictatorship, respectful of the League of Nations and world opinion, to the strong and arrogant German dictatorship. Major Fey’s aide-de-camp and his press chief, both of whom were at his side when he spoke, are Jews. Major Goldschmidt, a Jew, is among his chief lieutenants.

The hope in some Jewish circles that a government under the protection of Fey’s bayonets will take a mild stand on the Jewish question seems to me largely illusory. Anti-Semitic propaganda gained strength visibly as the artillery tore holes in the Karl Marx home and Goethchof and other workers’ dwellings. The last outpost of old-fashioned liberalism was being destroyed, and with it the last bulwark against open suppression of the Jewish minority. Whether Mussolini or Hitler comes out on top, the Jews will remain at the bottom.