The process of excluding Jews from the Austrian theatre and the boards of the large communal and professional organizations is continuing relentlessly, with the circle of exclusion widening every day, although officially there is no anti-Semitism in Austria.
The process appears to be a secret one and when cases of discrimination occur, as they do almost every day, it is impossible to fix the responsibility for the gradual and ever growing exclusion of the Jews.
The Neue Welt, Jewish newspaper edited by Robert Stricker, leader of the Austrian Revisionist Zionist group, declared that several Viennese theatre directors have stated that the Vienna theatres are adopting the Hitlerite methods and that Jewish actors are being gradually excluded from the theatre.
It is practically impossible for a Jewish actor to obtain an engagement in a Vienna theatre unless he is a star for whom no substitute is available, it was stated.
When engaging actors exceptional precautions are taken to question them to ascertain whether they can prove that they have an “Aryan grandmother” and can qualify under the “Aryan clause” which is so strictly enforced in the Third Reich.
MANY LEAVE LAND
The Neue Welt points out the large number of Jewish musicians connected with the stage who have left Austria in recent months owing to their inability to find employment.
The newly chosen board of the Union of Austrian Journalists, which was appointed “authoritatively,” does not include a single Jew, despite the fact that there are many notable Jewish journalists in Austria. Similarly the newly appointed board and the administrative committees of the state insurance company do not include a single Jew, although thousands of Austrian Jews hold policies in the state insurance company.
“Bodenstaendkeit” has become a household word in Austria, as frequently used as “gleichgeschaltet” is in Germany. While the word has no clear meaning, the anti-Semitic Austrian Nazi paper, Der Stuermer, defined it as follows: “A person bodenstaendig is one whose people conquered the land where the descendant lives, not with usury and cunning, but with sweat and blood, with the plow and with the sword.” This concept is now being preached openly all over Austria.
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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.
