Jews Crushed in Austria Turmoil

The political turmoil in Austria has wreaked havoc with the Jewish population of that country, more particularly with the Jews of Vienna.

Only five years ago Vienna was a thriving, virile, powerful community of nearly a quarter of a million Jews. They owned property. They were respected by their neighbors. They were looked up to as one of the leading Jewish communities of the world. Now, all that has vanished. The Jewish community of Vienna is impoverished. It is sunk in misery. ##is despondent, pride is gone and #ttle remains of the fighting spirit of the old self-reliant, economically #elf-supporting, emancipated Jewish community.

Every Jewish hand in this city, ### all Austria, indeed, is now ##retched out begging for bread and work.

There has suddenly descended #pon Austrian Jewry an economic catastrophe. The cause lies main## outside itself, in the political influence of Hitlerism. It lies in the combined plotting of the terrorist and vandalist elements among the ##itlerists, Socialists and Communists in Austria, all of which are ##ming to overthrow the existing government.

TERRORISM GROWS

This terrorism is increasing from week to week, despite the {SPAN}#ost{/SPAN} drastic measures taken by the government.

There are people- holding the highest office in the land who are #trangely quiet about it all. The seasons contributing to this omi#ous quiet are many. We list the two most plausible. They are quiet because the Nazis, the very bomb #hrowers and terrorists for whom the law specifically demands #eath, are their own sons, their own flesh and blood.

It is literally true that the country and the government service are #oneycombed with Nazis.

Only a few days before Dollfuss was assassinated, he had again reconstructed his government. What #ould the luckless man do? He could not rely upon his most important ministers. One did not want to shoot or imprison every Socialist in Austria. The other refused to sentence to death every Nazi in the country.

And who could blame either for refusing by their own hand to send to death their own sons and daughters; their own brothers and sisters?

CONDITION AN OPEN SECRET

These are among the things it is not permitted to write about in Austria. But people talk about them, and they are no secret to anyone. The Minister of War, Prince Schoenberg – Hartenstein, one of the highest Imperial Generals of the old Austrian empire, resigned because his own son had been arrested for Hitlerist activities and is now in a concentration camp. The commandant of the Vienna mounted police was dismissed together with a dozen other high police officers, having been caught redhanded at Hitlerist activities. They were found in possession of Nazi material.

All the above information is written down in printer’s black in the official publication “Prager Presse,” the organ of the Czechoslovakian government which was friendly to the Dollfuss regime. It would be necessary to hang or put in concentration camps about eighty per cent. of the active Austrian population to pacify the country and assure the stability of the present government.

AUSTRIA A RUINED LAND

This terrorism and uncertainty have ruined the country economically. And the result is, that the Jews, who depend on trade, have lost the very ground under their feet.

Commerce and industry are killed. The tourist traffic is dead— there is no security in the country. A kind of Mexico or Albania is developing in the heart of Europe.

The whole country has descended into the depths. Every man’s hand is against his neighbor’s. And all hands are against the Jews.

The Jews are buffeted and beaten from three different sides. Everybody knows that even the bombing of Jewish business places is not the work of Nazis alone. Communists and Socialists have been and still are their accomplices. Not out of anti-Semitism, but because they are furious with certain Jewish politicians who are friendly to the government.

Revolutionary conspirative elements in Austrian Socialism refuse to accept the Jewish explanations that they have no choice. The left party revolutionaries contend that, so far as they are concerned, Hitler or Starhemberg makes no difference to them. It is a matter of no moment to them, they assert, if the Jews want to take refuge under the wings of Catholic Fascism.

The result is, that the Jews are struck from all sides. From the Nazis, from Socialist and Communist terrorists and also from the new Christian-German political movement in Austria. (On top of all this, I am informed that the Left Party elements even boycott Jews in trading).

There is no evidence that the Fascist government has issued instructions to enforce a numerus clausus against Jews, let alone a numerus nullus. But it is, never-the less, a fact that the Christian-German policy is enforced rigorously in all institutions and enterprises connected in any way with the government or various municipalities. This is done without official orders. They are not needed.

Socialist Jews have been dismissed from every official position because they are Socialists. Others who are not Socialists have been dismissed under all sorts om pretexts. It is only in rare instances that a Jew has been able to retain his office and then only by bringing powerful influences to bear on his behalf by those Jews who are in close association with the government. That this intervention is possible is due to the fact that the government needs its Jewish leaders. They need them not only to create a friendly attitude abroad for Christian-German Austria, but what is of more immediate importance, to obtain for it financial assistance, out of their own pockets or from abroad. And thus it happens that sometimes a Jew here and there retains his old position.

“NOTHING LEFT FOR NAZIS”

There is a bitter jest going the rounds in Austria:

“By the time the Nazis come to power in Austria, they will find there isn’t a thing left for them to do in the direction of eliminating the Jews. It will all have been done for them.”

The Jewish situation in Austria is a terrible one, especially in Vienna where nine-tenths of Austrian Jewry lives. I shall say nothing now of the complete annihilation of Jewish emancipation in Austria. At the present moment, it would be more to the point if Austrian Jewry could be assured of the means of bare subsistence, for it is utterly destitute and all avenues to bread and employment seem closed to it.

It is here that we have the calamity at its worst. There is no bread and no work. Hunger and distress stalk through every section of the Jewish population. Hardly a family is exempt. Doctors, lawyers, members of the liberal professions, artisans, officials, skilled workers, merchants, brokers —all of them are in enforced idleness. For them there is no employment and no bread.

I have in front of me an appeal issued by an official Jewish body, formed for the special purpose of endeavoring to find employment openings for these unemployed. It reads as follows:

APPEAL FOR AID

“The number of Jews in search of work is growing more and more. Directors of first-class banks, bank managers, bookkeepers, owners of large enterprises, representatives of immense stores, salesmen in flourishing business houses, civil engineers, building workers, electro technicians, mechanics, skilled and unskilled workers, bakers, hairdressers, etc., etc.—are seeking work. All without exception are prepared to take any employment, whatever it is, as assistant in any business, as packers or carriers, at any kind of work—anything, so long as it will enable them to keep their families from starvation.”

“In addition,” the appeal points out, “it is now the end of the school year, and many Jewish girls and boys are leaving school, without the slightest chance of finding work. Nobody will take them. A Jewish mother who visited a Christian firm was told: ‘Even Jews do not accept Jewish employees.'”

This appeal shows how really desperate the position is in Austrian Jewry. The Vienna Jewish community is crashing financially under the load of trying to find the funds to pay out the small doles that keep body and soul together among those who are otherwise at the end of their tether. And the dole amounts in all to a few cents, not enough to provide a man with one good meal to still his hunger—and the community is compelled therefore to go to seek help from Jewish organizations abroad to enable it to continue to dole out these few cents per head to keep from starvation tens of thousands of shame-faced Jews who not long ago were well-to-do.

A special representative of the Vienna Jewish community may soon be going abroad to try obtain help among the Jewish communities of other countries. Will the help be just a few more cents to stave off starvation for another day, or is it possible to do something to alleviate the terrible position of Austrian Jewry?