From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (58 page)

Read From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism Online

Authors: Bruce F. Pauley

Tags: #History, #Jewish, #Europe, #Austria & Hungary, #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Discrimination & Race Relations, #test

 

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languages; they were distributed monthly to subscribers of
Gerechtigkeit
for use on their correspondence.

47

Current events, as they involved antiSemitism and Nazism, consumed most of the space in
Gerechtigkeit
. Harand was critical of anti-Semitic acts carried out by government officials in Austria, although she believed that they were committed by subordinates without the approval of their highest superiors. When Chancellor Dollfuss was murdered, she unambiguously declared that the true murderers, who wanted to put the world back a thousand years, were in Berlin and Munich. No government should have further diplomatic relations with Germany. She denounced what she called "cold antiSemitism" that resulted in the dismissal of Jewish physicians from municipal hospitals. She was apprehensive about the German-Austrian agreement of 11 July 1936, which reestablished normal diplomatic relations between the two countries because it would allow Nazi culture to reenter the country. However, she overoptimistically thought the government was aware of the problem so that the fears of Jews and Christians were groundless. Likewise, she tried to be reassuring about the Berchtesgaden agreement between Schuschnigg and Hitler in February 1938, calling it a positive step toward world peace.
48
Harand also responded to anti-Semitic charges made in recently published books and public speeches. She denounced
Zur Wiener Judenfrage
by Georg Glockemeier, which used statistics in a tendentious way, and
Ordnung in der Judenfrage
by Emmerich Czermak and Oskar Karbach. There was no "Jewish question," but instead a "human question." The real issue in Austria was poverty; antiSemitism was no better than a distraction from this crucial issue. All Austrians, including Jews, were needed to rebuild the country. If there were a Jewish question that needed clarification, then the same was needed for the Czech and Protestant minorities. When a book called
Gibt es jüdische Ritualmorde?
(
Is There Jewish Ritual Murder?
)a rhetorical question answered in the affirmativewas published by a Catholic publishing house in Graz, Harand did more than criticize. Her denunciation of the book persuaded the federal chancellerywhich feared it might cause foreign policy problemsto have the book confiscated. And when the leader of the Antisemitenbund, Anton Jerzabek, declared that Austrian Jews were a guest people who had never been invited to the country, Harand asked who had invited his Czech ancestors to come to Austria. She did not deny his right to be an Austrian citizen just because his ancestors could not speak German.
49
Although Jewish newspapers like
Die Wahrheit, Die Stimme
, and the American Jewish journal,
B'nai Brith Magazine
, sometimes wrote flattering articles about the Harand Movement, in general Irene Harand did not receive a great

 

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deal of support from Jews. The Nazis charged that the Harand Movement was created and financed by Jewish gold from Amsterdam and New York and was led by Moritz Zalman. In reality, however, it had only about 3,500 Jewish members and only one Jew in its twelve-member executive committee. Indeed Harand sometimes complained about her lack of Jewish support. Many Jews, she said, were indifferent to Nazism, including many she had met in Germany in 1932. They were divided into too many organizations and committees. They frequently did not even answer their critics, either out of false shame or false pride. Much of their money was going to Palestine instead of to the resistance against Nazism. It was depressing, she said, to see how they behaved in the face of danger. Their indolence was downright criminal.

50
The philoSemitic Abwehr-Verein in Germany had expressed similar disappointment around the turn of the century about Jewish silence in the face of anti-Semitic charges.
51

The Defense against AntiSemitism: How Effective?
It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the Harand Movement or any of the other organizations in Austria that attempted to combat antiSemitism. It is tempting to discount them since they obviously did not prevent the Holocaust or even greatly reduce antiSemitism. Clearly, they relied too heavily on rational arguments to fight what were largely irrational beliefs, although there were few if any alternatives to this strategy. Already in the 1890s the liberal German historian, Theodor Mommsen, told Hermann Bahr that antiSemites would "listen only to their own hatred and envy, to the meanest instincts."
52
It is also obvious that Jews and philoSemites were hurt by their own disunity and even, in some cases, by their underestimation of the Nazi threat. Almost certainly, however, the most important reason for failure was the relatively small size of the Jewish population in Austria as well as the small number of Christians willing to help them. These same fundamental problems existed all over Europe, especially in Poland, where the Jewish population was much larger than in Austria.
53
Perhaps the most effective type of defense against antiSemitism was the satire found in Hugo Bettauer's book,
The City without Jews
. Bettauer's novel enjoyed a huge readership and was later even made into a motion picture. By contrast, the propaganda of the Jewish self-defense organizations, and even the Harand Movement, was almost certainly read and heard mostly by those already converted to the cause.
Even so, the defense against antiSemitism did make a real difference. The

 

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complaints of the Kultusgemeinde, the Union of Austrian Jews, the League of Jewish Front Fighters, and the Harand Movement all achieved at least some short-term legal successes. And it is certainly possible that without pressure from these groups, the Austrian government might have felt free to follow a much harsher anti-Semitic policy.

Dr. Bloch's Wochenschrift
pointed out another easily forgotten advantage of self-defense: it helped counteract Jewish indifference. Through it Jews learned more about their own religion and heritage. Josef Bloch believed that Jews simply had to defend themselves against false accusations; it was a social duty and was demanded by self-respect.

54
As for the Harand Movement, its followers must have surely gained a sense of self-worth at a time when some of the fundamental principles of civilization were being ruthlessly attacked.

 

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18
Friend or Foe?:
The DollfussSchuschnigg Regime

By themselves Austrian Jews were too splintered and their Christian allies were too few to be effective against the anti-Semitic onslaught in the early 1930s. However, just when the Nazis in both Austria and Germany were marching from one electoral victory to another, and just when anti-Semitic violence at the University of Vienna was reaching unprecedented proportions, the Jews of Austria gained an unexpected ally: the Christian Social chancellor of Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss. Although Austrian Jews found it difficult to agree on much of anything, they could at least agree on their almost unqualified support of the young chancellor.

1

Neither Dollfuss, who had become the youngest head of government in Europe at age thirty-nine in May 1932, nor his successor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, resorted to the use of antiSemitism in their public or private statements even though as late as 1932 the official program of the Christian Social Party still said that antiSemitism was an essential part of the party's ideology and was no mere piece of agitation material. The program spoke of the "corruptive, revolutionary" influence of Jewry, although it still rejected racial antiSemitism. By contrast, when the Christian Social Party celebrated the birthday of its founder, Karl Lueger, in October 1933, neither Dollfuss nor any other Christian Social speaker, nor even the
Reichspost
mentioned Lueger's antiSemitism, even though antiSemitism had been the cornerstone of the mayor's ideology and campaign tactics.
2
The Jewish Press and The Dollfuss Regime
Jewish support for Dollfuss seldom wavered, even when in March 1933 the Austrian Parliament dissolved after all three of its presidents resigned in protest over a minor voting procedure. Dollfuss was under pressure from his mentor,

 

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Mussolini, to abolish democracy. The four-foot-eleven-inch chancellor took advantage of the situation by declaring that Parliament had dissolved itself, and he forcibly prevented it from reconvening. He used this unforeseen turn of events as a pretext for establishing an authoritarian regime which was to last until the annexation of the country by Germany almost five years later.

Although Dollfuss's commitment to democracy has long been a matter of some disputehe was a member of that "front generation" that was accustomed to giving and taking ordersthere can be little question that his immediate motivation was to block the Anschluss following Hitler's consolidation of power in Germany and the rapid rise of the Nazi Party in Austria. The chancellor wished to prevent the Nazis from using Parliament to increase their popularity through demagogic agitation the way they had done in Germany.

3

Whatever the Socialists, democrats, and some historians may have thought about the chancellor's antidemocratic moves, there can be no debate that they had the strong and nearly unanimous support of Austria's Jews, even many who in normal times supported the Socialist Party. Although press censorship also began about this time, it did not require active support of the government, in sharp contrast to that of the Third Reich. Even the liberal
Wahrheit
thought the dissolution of Parliament was "the lesser of two evils."
4
Moreover, the termination of parliamentary democracy in Austria did not mean the end of democratic Jewish politics. As discussed in Chapter 15, the politics of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde continued unchanged until the Anschluss. Oddly enough, Jews were the only Austrians to retain their political parties after 1934 (albeit only for their Kultusgemeinde) as well as to have the right to elect representatives through democratic elections; all other political offices in Austria were appointed from above. Even stranger is the existence of the same situation in Nazi Germany until 1938.
5
Both Zionists and assimilationists were unstinting in their support of Dollfuss.
Die Stimme
praised the chancellor for trying to maintain peace and order. Although forbidding assemblies (a policy also initiated by Dollfuss) was regrettable, the Nazis had misused freedom of assembly and would do so even more after Hitler's victory in Germany. Peace and order were also essential for Austria's ailing economy. Leading Austrian Zionists such as Oskar Grünbaum, the president of the Zionist Federation of Austria, were convinced that the Dollfuss government would be succeeded by a Nazi one if it were to fall. And an Austrian Nazi government would be more disastrous for Jews than the Hitler dictatorship because of the large number of despised Ostjuden in Vienna. Zionist support for Dollfuss, which included attempting to influence the English press through their connections in London, had to be kept secret,

 

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however, so as not to embarrass the chancellor.

6
When in late April Dollfuss took the further step of forbidding future elections,
Die Wahrheit
thought that these measures had been taken to preserve Austria's independence. At a time when Nazi membership in Austria was growing rapidly, "even the most convinced democrats realize[d] that the Austrian government, in the present chaotic circumstances, need[ed] to take unusual measures to bring Austria out of dangerous times and into a better future."
7

In June
Die Wahrheit
was even stronger in its support of the Dollfuss government, saying that the chancellor, "with prudence and decisiveness, [had done] everything possible to fend off the brown [Nazi] threat to Austria." The paper also accepted at face value the chancellor's statement to a foreign reporter that all races and religions were being treated equally by the Austrian government. It likewise approved the use of police in Vienna's Hochschulen to prevent Nazi violence, even though this move violated Austria's ancient tradition of academic autonomy. The paper had long been calling for such action to protect Jewish students. Later in the summer of 1933 the Austrian government announced that it would organize a new security force for Austrian universities. It also prohibited the Deutsche Studentenschaft in Austria because it was just one part of an organization that had been coordinated by the German government. The government even censored public notices of other student organizations, many of which had anti-Semitic contents.
8
Die Wahrheit
was so impressed by the government's anti-Nazi actions that it thought that "the spread of the brown plague [had been] banished. The measures of the political doctors of Austria [had been] so radical that they had localized the contagion." This interpretation appeared to be well justified when on 19 June the government outlawed the Austrian Nazi Party and shut down its press after the Nazis had perpetrated a series of terrorist actions.
9
Such high praise from Jewish circles was not appreciated by all members of the government, however, At a cabinet meeting held on 14 June Minister of the Army Carl Vaugoin remarked that the government's anti-Nazi policies were being pursued for the benefit of the country's "Aryan" population, not for the Jews. He did not like the enthusiastic support given the government by Jewish newspapers, preferring the times when Jews had insulted him.
10
Austrian Jews were also well disposed toward the new authoritarian constitution that went into force on 1 May 1934.
Die Wahrheit
said that although Jews would regret the passing of the old constitution of 1867, which had first brought about their emancipation, they would not regret the downfall of the misused parliamentary democracy, which had created an anti-Semitic plague. The paper welcomed the equality of all citizens and the free exercise and au-

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