From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (66 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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Leopold Kunschak was still around after 1945 to make anti-Semitic speeches. Seven years in a Nazi concentration camp had done nothing to change his attitude toward Jews. One of the founding fathers of the Second Republic and the first president of the postwar National Assembly, Kunschak protested the entry of Polish Jews into Austria and continued to boast at a big rally in December 1945 that he had always been an antiSemite.

6

Kunschak's speech was a rarity, however, even in early postwar Austria because government officials were eager to avoid offending the occupying powers by doing anything that might jeopardize an early state treaty and the return of Austria's sovereignty. Consequently, Kunschak's speech was never published. Mayor Theodor Körner of Vienna even went so far as to say in February 1947 that Viennese antiSemitism was nothing more than a "fairy tale." On the other hand, there were instances of former prominent antiSemites apparently undergoing a genuine change of heart. For example, Friedrich Funder, who had been editor of the
Reichspost
, was transformed by his experience in Nazi concentration camps. No trace of his former antiSemitism could be found in his newspaper,
Die Furche
, which he edited after the war.
7
Even after Austria finally regained its independence in 1955, naked antiSemitism expressed in speeches or demonstrations remained uncommon, especially when compared to the First Republic. Unlike many other European countries, no tombs have been desecrated and the number of swastikas painted as graffiti has probably not been any greater than on Long Island, at least prior to the Waldheim affair.
8
The worst offenders could again be found in the country's institutions of higher learning during the first two postwar decades. This was true even though between 50 and 60 percent of all university teachers were dismissed after 1945 as part ofde-Nazification. However, by 1950, many of these professors had returned to their posts. Worst of all, however, was a right-wing organization called the Ring Freiheitlicher Studenten or Circle of Freedom-loving Students. In 1961 members of this organization beat up an American and told him to get out of the country. Four years later a professor of history at the College of World Trade, Dr. Taras Borodajkewycz, a selfdescribed Nazi long before Hitler took over Austria, became the center of a controversy because of his outspoken anti-Semitic and panGerman opinions. His remarks produced demonstrations both for and against him, which resulted in an elderly Communist being beaten to death by a neo-Nazi student. After these incidents, however, there was a marked decrease in right-wing extremism in Austria's universities. By the late 1980s neo-Nazi student politics were not nearly as significant as they were during the first twenty years of the Second Republic, not to mention the interwar years.
9

 

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Street sign in Vienna with anti-Semitic grafitto reading "short-term parking
zone in Vienna, fee required for Jews." Photograph by the author, 1987.

In 1966, Franz Olah, the leader of the tiny Democratic Progressive Party, created a minor uproar by saying that Jews in the Socialist Party were trying to grab power.

10
Otherwise, avowed political antiSemitism has been a virtual taboo ever since 1945. No Austrian politician of the 1980s or 1990s would dare to brag about being a lifelong antiSemite. Moreover, in contrast to the First Republic, no public servant would suggest today that if only the "Jewish problem" could be solved, all other problems would automatically disappear. No longer do any of Austria's political parties or private associations use antiSemitism as an integrating device.

One obvious proof of the very substantial decline in Austrian antiSemitism during the Second Republic was the chancellorship of the Jewish Social-

 

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ist, Bruno Kreisky, from 1970 to 1983. A cynic could, of course, retort that Kreisky's popularity was based in part on his coolness toward Zionism and sympathetic treatment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The fact remains, however, that no Jew of any political persuasion could have become a chancellor during the First Republic let alone remained the popular leader of the country for thirteen years.

None of this is intended to suggest that antiSemitism has disappeared in Austria, but it has been restricted largely to code words and private prejudicial feelings. Indeed, it has been called "antiSemitism without antiSemites" and "antiSemitism without Jews." Few Austrians openly admit to being antiSemites. As in the First Republic, prejudice is directed only against Jews in general, especially those living abroad, and not specific Jews, particularly not those living in Austria. Austrian antiSemitism is also strongest in the provinces where almost no Jews live today and very few have lived in the past, and weaker in Vienna, the home of nearly all of Austria's contemporary Jewish population and the traditional heartland of Austrian antiSemitism.

11

AntiSemitism and Public Opinion Polls
That prejudices still exist has been demonstrated in numerous public opinion surveys conducted since the early postwar years. All of them have shown that antiSemitism remains stronger in Austria than in Germany, France, or the United States. For example, polls conducted in 1986 showed that 60 percent of the Austrians surveyed thought that all Jews ought to move to Israel. Only 44 percent of the Germans agreed with that statement, 35 percent of the French, and just 13 percent of the Americans. Sixty-three percent of the Austrians said they would not want to live next to a Jew, compared with 48 percent in Germany, 15 percent in France, and 9 percent in the United States.
12
In general the surveys have shown that about 75 percent of all Austrians privately articulate at least some anti-Semitic views, about 20 to 25 percent have fairly strong anti-Semitic opinions, and about 7 to 10 percent can be described as extreme antiSemites.
13
A poll conducted in 1970 revealed that 35 percent of the respondents would not marry a Jew; 45 percent thought that Jews acted only out of self-interest; and 21 percent thought it would be better if there were no Jews in Austria.
14
Ancient stereotypes have remained especially tenacious in Austria. A survey in 1973 showed that 44 people in 100 thought that most Jews did not want to work with their hands. In 1976, 34 percent thought one could not have an

 

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honest competition with Jews, and 15 percent thought that wherever there was some shameless exploitation at least one Jew was sure to be involved. (The latter question was an almost verbatim quotation from Hitler's
Mein Kampf
in which he asked: ''Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?") Sixty-four percent thought that Jews had too much influence in international finance and business. In the same year (1976) 18 percent agreed that restrictions should be placed on Jews entering influential professions in Austria; 33 percent answered the same question affirmatively in 1986.

15

A survey completed early in 1987 drew criticism from intellectuals because it claimed that an average of only 7 percent of the respondents agreed that Austrian Jews were unpleasant, that they would find it difficult to shake hands with a Jew, that they found nothing wrong with discrimination against Jews, and that they would break off a friendship if they discovered the person was a Jew. However, 15 percent said that Austria would be better off with no Jews; 59 percent did not object to Jews being run down in Austrian newspapers; 25 percent did not care if politicians tried to seek political advantages by making anti-Semitic remarks; and 23 percent thought that efforts ought to be made to keep Jews out of influential positions. One of the more depressing aspects about the survey is that there was a positive correlation between church attendance and anti-Semitic views, something that was also true of German and no doubt also Austrian antiSemites in the 1930s. An incredible 50 percent of the respondents to surveys in 1976 and 1980 thought that Jews still comprised 10 percent of the country's total population or over 700,000 people, one hundred times the actual Jewish population!
16
The most recent public opinion poll conducted in early 1989 revealed a reversal in the decline of antiSemitism that had been apparent in earlier polls since at least 1973. For example, in 1973, 21 percent of the Austrians polled replied that their country would be better off with no Jews whatsoever. This figure declined to just 8 percent in 1988, but rose to 13 percent a year later. In response to other questions, 18.5 percent thought that Jews are responsible for the disintegration of ancient religious values, 29.4 percent thought that Jews have proved themselves to be calamitous throughout history, and 21.9 percent said that Jews cannot become good Catholics and therefore assimilation is impossible. Altogether the poll revealed that 10.2 percent of the respondents could be categorized at "vehemently" anti-Semitic, 27 percent as mildly anti-Semitic, and 62.8 percent as neutral or philoSemitic. It also showed that more men (14.8 percent) than women (7 percent) were hard-core antiSemites. One encouraging statistic shown by the poll was that only 7.5

 

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percent of young people were ardent antiSemites compared with 11.5 percent for those over forty years of age. On the other hand, it is disconcerting to learn that antiSemitism did not decline with educational attainment although that generalization apparently does not apply to people with advanced degrees.

17

Another interesting revelation of the public opinion polls is the striking similarity between the political antiSemitism of the First and Second Republics. The poll of 1989 showed that the Socialist Party still had the fewest hard-core antiSemites with 6.5 percent, followed by the conservative Austrian People's Party (the successor to the Christian Social Party) with 8 percent. On the other hand, 35.5 percent of the members of the Freedom Party (which might be considered the successor to the Greater German People's Party) were hard-core antiSemites or (according to an earlier poll conducted in 1970) about half of all those who were so designated.
18
Restitution and De-Nazification
Probably in response to these popular feelings, the Austrian government, until recently at least, has not been anxious to compensate those former Austrian Jews who lost their homes, jobs, and property after the Anschluss. The Austrian press was almost unanimously opposed to the negotiations over reparations that took place between representatives of the Austrian government and the Jewish Claims Committee during the 1950s and early 1960s and even today
Wiedergutmachung
(reparations) is a dirty word as far as the Austrian public is concerned. Therefore, the history of the attempts by Jews to gain compensation is a long and torturous one, which is not entirely resolved even today.
19
Apart from the political unpopularity of compensating Jewish victims of Nazism, the other fundamental difficulty has been the unwillingness of the Austrian government to consider itself a successor to the Third Reich. To a certain extent this policy was at the outset part of a perfectly understandable effort to legitimize the Second Republic by putting as much distance between Austria and Germany as possible. Consequently, the Austrian government, which from 1945 to 1966 was a coalition of both major parties, at first rejected any responsibility for reparations, saying that Austria had been an occupied country between 1938 and 1945; therefore it was the Germans rather than the Austrians who were accountable for the suffering of the Austrian Jews. The Federal Republic of (West) Germany had the opposite motivation. By accepting the role of successor to the Third Reich it hoped to strengthen its claim to speak for all Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain and therefore fully

 

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cooperated with the Jewish Claims Committee. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer also realized as early as 1950 that reparations would be an important factor in the international rehabilitation of West Germany, help achieve an early end to the occupation, and lead to better relations with the United States. On the other hand, having no desire for a new Anschluss with Austria, the Federal Republic refused to accept responsibility for illegal or violent acts against Austrian Jews committed by Austrian citizens.

20

It is extremely unlikely, however, that political legitimacy was the only factor causing the Austrian government to reject responsibility for Jewish property losses, which amounted to $1.2 billion. The new owners of the "Aryanized" property, like the owners of confiscated Jewish property in Poland and other Eastern European countries, had no desire to return it to its original owners (if they were still alive) and were able to exercise enormous pressure on the Austrian government to limit any possible restitution. At first the Austrian government argued that 50 percent of the Austrian Jews in 1938 were baptized and therefore could not be represented by a Jewish organization. Only in 1953, after some diplomatic pressure had been put on the Austrian government by the State Department of the United States and the British Foreign Office, did the Austrian government consent to negotiate with the Committee for Jewish Claims on Austria, a coalition of the Jewish communities of Austria and twenty-three international Jewish organizations. Even then the Austrians agreed only to a moral, not a legal responsibility for making compensations, a position it still subscribes to today. After nine years of negotiations the government eventually settled on a sum of $6 million plus 10 percent to cover administrative costs compared with $822 million agreed to by the West Germans, not counting the $33 billion Bonn gave to Israel up to 1990. Jews who lost land in 1938 (a relatively small number since Jews were not large landowners) received only two-thirds of its actual value; those who had lost property were awarded only one-fourth of its real value. Left completely uncompensated was the almost total loss of income the Jewish refugees had suffered during the first two or three years following their departure from Austria, interrupted educations, lost promotions, illnesses induced by the persecutions, and, of course, the lives of 65,000 murdered Jews.
21
The Austrian government has been especially opposed to making lump sum payments to any international group of victims. On the other hand, in recent years it has been more forthcoming with regard to pensions for individual Jews now living abroad and especially in assisting the tiny Jewish communities remaining in Austria. In addition to the modest one-time payment of between $250 and $500 granted in 1988 by the Austrian government to Jewish victims

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