“cold Pogrom” in East Austria Described

The following account of a “cold pogrom” which has already driven nearly 200 Jews from their homes in Burgenland towns into exile was given to the J.T.A. correspondent by a reliable informant and substantiated by informed Nazis. Supporting evidence was found by the correspondent during a visit to one of the towns affected.

The province of Burgenland lies east of Vienna, along the Czechoslovakian and Hungarian frontiers and was once part of Hungary. Jews are not numerous in the province (an unofficial estimate puts their number at 3,600 in a general population of close to 300,000) but many of those driven out and deprived of every penny were well-to-do. Unverified but plausible accounts state the money and property so far confiscated total hundreds of thousands of schillings (the schilling was quoted at approximately 19 cents before Anschluss).

The Jewish communities in the province have been established there from 150 to 200 years. The people are orthodox and provincial, few having had frequent or prolonged contacts with the outside world. For years they have lived in small white stucco houses, indistinguishable from those of their “Aryan” neighbors. Most of them made money dealing in wine and grain, the principal products of the region.

At 5:30 o’clock on the afternoon of March 26, ten to fourteen Jewish families of the town of Frauenkirchen, and three or four of Neusiedl-Am-See, were brought by Brownshirts to the gendarmerie post command at Frauenkirchen. Among the arrested were women and children and several persons in their late seventies. At the station, in the presence of an S.S. (Schutz – Staffel, or elite guard) man detailed from the Gestapo quarters at Eisenstadt, these people were forced to make “voluntary” renunciation of all their property under threat that they would never see sunlight again. They were then released and ordered to leave German territory within three days and told they could take only clothing with them.

On the afternoon of March 30, a group of these families were brought to the Czech frontier at Kitteseeberg, accompanied by an S.S. officer. Permission to enter Czechoslovakia was refused. For a while the Jews were interned at the border customs office. Later in the evening, the S.S. official in charge declared the Jews could not remain interned on Austrian territory, but had to cross the frontier individually, through the barbed wire fences separating the two countries.

Similar arrests and confiscations occurred in the towns of Kittsee, Deutschkreutz and Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt has an ancient ghetto, which was once set off from the rest of the town by a chain stretched across the street. The chain is still there.

Aside from what has actually happened to these perhaps fifty families, the “cold pogrom” has had an incalculable effect on the Jews still remaining in the province. The correspondent visited one of the towns where a comparatively large number of arrests had been made. The streets were quiet, but many Jewish stores were boarded up. The few remaining open bore posters proclaiming, “Warning! Jewish Business.” In these shops Jewish merchants sit huddled up in corners waiting a turn, knowing with certainty that none of their former “Aryan” customers dare ignore the warning on the doors.

In Vienna signs identifying Jewish shops were torn down a week ago, but in this provincial town, where the signs do immeasurably greater harm to the owner because of the intimate surroundings, they have evidently been put up for a prolonged period.

Less clearly demonstrable are similar events happening in other Burgenland communities. How many of the now penniless Jews have been forced to cross the Hungarian and Czech frontiers, how many are interned in barracks along the border is impossible to estimate, except for the fact that some 200 individuals whose cases were cited above are affected.

It was reliably reported that during the developments several attempts were made in influential quarters to intervene in behalf of the Jews. Among those making the efforts were several large “Aryan” concerns which had long had business relations with members of the Burgenland communities. In each instance the attempt ended in failure.