Austrian Summer Resort Owners Beginning to Feel Harm Anti-semitism Does Their Business

Seeing the great harm that anti-Semitism is doing to their business, Austrian Summer resort proprietors are now staging a retreat from the methods they have been practicing for the last few years. From patriotic motives the Jews did not at first institute any wide protests against the open discrimination, fearing that their protests might hurt the Austrian tourist industry. The anti-Semites, however, interpreted this complacence to mean that the Jews were not insulted by the manner in which they were treated and would continue to patronize their resorts.

Anti-Semitic insolence thus grew from year to year until the Jews could no longer endure it and they initiated a boycott campaign against it. They also obtained the support of the Liberal Vienna press, which feared that the organized Jewish campaign would also keep away many non-Jews from the anti-Semitic resorts and this would bring economic ruin to a great part of the country.

The fear proved to be only too true. The Jewish campaign actually made the anti-Semitic resorts free from Jews, but it also made them free from many visitors, and the hotel proprietors with mounting debts and lessened patronage were driven to bankruptcy. That was the best lesson the mislead Christian population could have learned. Such bitter experiences opened their eyes and released their anger against the anti-Semitic agitators, who, by their agitation, had turned their resorts not only into resorts without Jews, but also without many liberal Christians.

The Hitlerist press tried to quiet the angry proprietors with promises to supply them next Summer with transports of guests from Germany, but these promises failed to produce results. Many proprietors have already begun to remove the anti-Semitic posters “Jews Not Wanted” from their buildings. They are also communicating their change of attitude officially and privately to Jewish organizations in Vienna, saying that they are ready next Summer to receive Jewish guests who will be treated courteously and pleasantly.

That was the first result of the Jewish protest against stupid anti-Semitic business methods. But next Summer is still to prove whether the regret of the anti-Semites is serious and whether the Jewish protest campaign really achieved success, or is to continue its boycott on even wider lines.