Plebiscite Drive Launched in Austria; Jews Keep to Homes; New Curbs Enacted

While anti-Semitic restrictions continued to pile up, a march of 10,000 Brown Shirts through the Ringstrasse tonight opened the campaign to turn out the vote for Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s April 10 plebiscite to ratify Austro-German Anschluss.

Simultaneously with the launching of the campaign Jews began to lead a hermetic existence. They will keep off the principal streets for the next fortnight.

A proclamation today made the Nuremberg race and citizenship laws of 1935 the basis for excluding Jews from voting in the referendum. Under these laws, persons converted to Christianity are still considered Jewish, as are persons with three Jewish grandparents.

Other new curbs on Jews are as follows:

1–Jewish students at Vienna University were refused permission to take examinations or to use the university library.

2–Jews were barred from service as “laymen judges,” who sit with court judges to form the jury.

3–Jews were barred from acting as bankruptcy receivers. Several were notified today that their appointments had been cancelled in favor of “Aryans.”

4–Jews who have cars in public garages were prevented from using them. For nearly a week they have been unable to get their cars out of the garages, and removal of the vehicles has been blocked by the Nazi group in charge of the garage trade until further notice. The Jewish car owners were warned, however, to pay the garage bills under threat of being “exposed” to the Nazi Party.

Hofrat Salomon Frankfurter, 82-year-old philologist and librarian, who was arrested last week, is now being held in the prison hospital of the Criminal Courts Building pending disposal of his case by the Gestapo (State Secret Police). The charge against him has not been revealed.