Informed quarters said today the Gestapo will permit the Vienna Jewish Community to reshape its shattered organization only under leadership firmly committed to an emigration policy and working without material aid from Berlin Jewish organizations. The Gestapo, it was reliably learned, demands that the leadership of the community undertake to send 25,000 Jews out of Austria before the end of the year.
Although prohibition of aid from Jewish organizations in Berlin would shatter the chief hopes of aid, Jewish leaders were determined to make the best of whatever opportunities were afforded to create an organization capable of meeting the needs of the stricken Jewish community.
A complicating factor was the Gestapo’s demand that the Jews raise 800,000 schillings (as a contribution to the Nazi Party, to match the sum allegedly contributed to ex-Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg) before the community would be permitted to resume its activities.
The sum of 300,000 schillings has already been turned over to the authorities. Jewish circles hoped that officials would make some concession on the original demand in view of the difficulty of raising the balance.
With the re-arrest of Dr. Desider Friedmann, former president of the community, the responsibility for carrying out the emigration plan and heading the organization which would have to work out the salvation of Austria’s 200,000 Jews was understood to devolve on Dr. Josef Loewenherz, managing director of the community.
Dr. Loewenherz, himself released from prison last Thursday where he had been held for weeks on a charge of burning a list of Jewish contributors to Schuschnigg’s cause, was understood to be detained at his home under guard, not permitted to see intimates, but allowed to see associates on plans for the community’s future.
Dr. Friedmann, released last Thursday from Dachau concentration camp after being arrested March 18 on a charge of raising funds for the Schuschigg Government, was summoned to the Gestapo on Friday and again on Saturday. He did not return from his second visit. There was no hint of the reason for his being rearrested.
Meanwhile, it was learned that G. Shoffman, Hebrew writer, has been released after several weeks under arrest in Graz.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
