Suicides mounted and desperate Jews besieged foreign consulates to find a way to leave the country as Purim, traditional Hebrew feast of joy, today found Austria’s 200,000 Jews swiftly being ousted from the life of the country.
The Jewish press has been completely banned, all organizations except the Vienna Jewish Community’s executive staff have been suppressed and Vienna’s principal synagogues are closed. Confiscation of Jewish property and “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses are proceeding rapidly.
Anti-Semitic measures are being issued with swiftness surprising even to Nazi extremists. At this pace, Austrian Jewry will be reduced in a few weeks to the position in which Germany’s Jews now find themselves after five years of Nazi rule.
Newspapers report suicides daily, listing only the initials and giving no reasons. One reason for the suicide yesterday of Major Emil Fey, former Vice Chancellor and Minister of Public Security, who first killed his wife and son, was selieved to be the fact his wife was a converted Jewess.
Despite persistent efforts by Jewish leaders to calm the Jewish populace, foreign consulates were being besieged by desperate people seeking a way to leave the country.
Jewish-owned stores are being ransacked or “Aryanized” overnight. For the past three days streets in the Jewish quarters have been rumbling with trucks carting away merchandise from Jewish stores and warehouse.
The owners do not know where their goods are being taken, or even if the sacking is taking place under official orders. All that is known is that on some instances the Jewish merchants have been given receipts, although what settlement will be made is not known.
JEWISH STORE-OWNERS TOLD TO GET OUT
Many leading Jewish-owned establishments are being taken over by “Aryans.” In these instances Nazi officials have simply told the owners to get out and stay out. Here again there is no information on whether any compensation will be made. Among the stores expropriated are Zweiback’s department store, Epstein’s, Dichter’s and several
Arrests of prominent Jews continue, the latest being Herman Oppenheim, president of the Union of Austrian Jews, and Robert Danneberg, former Socialist deputy. It is not known where the arrested Jews are held. Hundreds of smaller functionaries have also been seized, such as the beadle of a small synagogue on Thelemenngasse, who was arrested last night and his small room ransacked.
A purge occurred in the official unions of foresters and farmers. All Jews were ousted, and these organizations were placed under a Nazi commissar. Jewish firms have been expelled from the electrical associations, thus being deprived of participation in the city’s subsidies usually given on large electrical contracts.
Following the dismissal of Jewish physicians from hospitals and social insurance panels, and discharge of Jewish judges and state attorneys, the National Socialist Union of Lawyers demanded disarmament of all Jewish lawyers, including war veterans, with the proviso that veterans and lawyers who could prove their fathers fell in battle might be permitted to seek readmission. If the authorities comply with the union’s demand, 1,400 Jews in Vienna alone will be deprived of their livelihood.
It was rumored that signs announcing, “Jewish Children Not Admitted,” would be posted on schools when they reopened after a holiday.
Groups of Jews, including two prominent rabbis, were forced to scrub streets under the eyes of storm troopers in the Jewish quarter, where the most violent aspects of the anti-Semitic drive were apparent. Jews forced to scrub off Schuschnigg slogans scrawled on the pavements included the present heads of the famed Chassidic rabbinic dynasties, Sadegora and Kupchiner.
It was officially announced that in barring Jews from voting in the plebiscite April 10, the authorities will define “Jew” under the standards set by the Nuremberg Laws of September, 1935, which class as a Jew any person with three Jewish grandparents, or, in the case of Jews of “mixed race,” any person with two Jewish grandparents.
TO SPEED UP ISSUANCE OF RACIAL LAWS
While sacking stores spread from Vienna’s Jewish quarters to the city’s principal business districts, Minister of Justice Fritz Hueber announced today that racial legislation would receive first consideration as his department set to work on the wholesale alteration of the legal code necessitated by the Anschluss. He declared the tempo of issuance of racial laws would be speeded up.
A quick survey of the city by this correspondent revealed the thoroughness and expedition, unequalled even in the Reich, with which the Nazi storm troops and blackshirted elite guards accomplished their work of shattering Jewish influence and terrorizing the Jewish community.
Overnight Jewish shops were forced to put up signs marking them as “non-Aryan” enterprises. Some of the larger shops were also forced to display signs reading, “Aryans Do Not Buy From Jews.” An undetermined number of Jewish shops were completely closed down. The correspondent counted fourteen such within a few blocks along the Margaretenstrasse near the center of the city.
In some cases the closing came after direct pressure, even robbery, and in other cases the proprietors feared to open the shops. One of the Margaretenstrasse shops was closed after the proprietor tried to wash off the word “Jude” (Jew) scrawled with red paint on the window. The attempt met with a brick thrown through the window, followed by robbery of the shop.
In the Jewish quarter on the East Danube channel, the correspondent witnessed a group of Jews scrubbing a hooked cross, the emblem of ex-Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, from a concrete wall under the supervision of Brownshirts and Elite Guards, while 100 laughing, chattering youngsters watched and yelled derisive encouragement to the scrubbers.
“OWNER JEW” IS REASON FOR RAIDING STORE
On Taborstrasse in the same district, a truck stood alongside the Schiffman Low Price Department Store with workers wearing swastika armbands emptying the store of its contents and Brownshirts holding back the gaping crowds. The writer asked one of the guards the reason for the raise. “Because he’s a Jew,” was the answer.
The writer asked if the proprietor had committed any crime of had done anything wrong. The only answer was, “I don’t know anything about that.”
Last night and the preceding night, gangs visited Jewish homes after midnight and forced Jews, with nothing but coats thrown over their pajamas, to accompany them to them to their stores and open them. The gangs then helped themselves to merchandise, scribbling receipts on wrapping paper.
So extensive has the anti-Semitic banditry been that today’s Vienna edition of Voelkischer Beobachter, Chancellor Hitler’s paper, was compelled to assert that the persons really responsible were Communists wearing Nazi uniforms.
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