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The Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin presents the year 1938 through the eyes of Jews, whose personal documents detail their experiences and the hardships they suffered as well as the growing tensions in Europe and diminishing hope for Jews in Germany and Austria.

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29

THURSDAY

29

Blackmailed into emigration

To freedom via Cuba

“As soon as we have the details about the entry permit for Cuba, we will notify you.”

Schwandorf, Bavaria

The large-scale arrests of Jewish men during the November Pogroms – around 30,000 were incarcerated at the Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps – fulfilled its purpose: it served to blackmail Jews into giving up on their remaining assets and emigrating. Among the 10,911 Jews held in Dachau alone were Georg Friedmann, owner of a fashion shop in Schwandorf (Bavaria) and his son, Bruno. Lillian Friedman, his wife, lost no time. Already in November, with her husband and son still incarcerated, she went to the travel agency of the Hamburg-America-Line in Munich for a consultation, which was followed by an intensive correspondence. Thanks to a wealthy relative in New York (who had heard about them for the first time in this context), they had received an affidavit. The plan was to travel to New York via Cuba. On December 29th, the Hamburg-America-Line issued a receipt to Mrs. Friedmann for the passage from Hamburg to Havanna of her son, Bruno, and her mother-in-law, Amanda Friedmann.

TAGS: affidavits, Buchenwald, Concentration Camps, Cuba, Dachau, December 29, economic persecution, emigration, family, family separation, immigration procedures, imprisonment, Jewish property, kristallnacht, New York, November Pogrom, Sachsenhausen, Schwandorf

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

George and Lillian Friedman Collection, AR 7223

Original:

Box 1, folder 4

20

TUESDAY

20

Emigration as a condition for release

Freedom only after emigration

“For presentation at the consular section of the US Embassy in Vienna, the Chief of Police in Vienna (Central Registry Office) confirms that the following information is available regarding the sojourn here of Mrs. Renee Aldor, née Fanto, b. December 30 in Budapest, Hungary, right of residence in Wr. Neustadt, at the Central Registry Office.”

Vienna

On November 10th, in the course of the pogroms sweeping the entire Reich, Ernst Aldor, an electrical engineer, was arrested in his own home in Vienna for the crime of being a Jew. He was deported to the Dachau concentration camp 366 kilometers west of his home town. On December 9th, he was released. During the period of his incarceration, his wife Renée received an entry permit for Bolivia and a telegram from her cousin, Emil Deutsch, in America, confirming that an affidavit was being prepared. Australia was a third option the couple had considered as a place of refuge. To prepare for emigration, Renée Aldor, a native of Hungary, procured this document from the registry office at police headquarters in Vienna, dated December 20th, listing all her residences in the city since 1920.

TAGS: affidavits, bureaucracy, Concentration Camps, Dachau, December 20, document, emigration, family, family separation, immigration procedures, imprisonment, kristallnacht, November Pogrom, South America, transnational networks, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Renee Aldor Collection, AR 10986

Original:

Box 1, folder 3

7

WEDNESDAY

7

Finally: positive answers!

A boy diarist documents the time before emigration

“First we waited with great anticipation for one reply, and now they are all arriving at once.”

Vienna

Every now and then, the diary of the Viennese boy Harry Kranner-Fiss deals with topics appropriate to a 12-year-old: doing mischief at school, excitement about new clothes, a “grown-up” haircut, playing with friends. But more often than not, Harry’s eloquent entries reflect his keen awareness of the threatened state of Jews in Austria in 1938: they deal with an uncle’s deportation to the Dachau concentration camp, his aunt being locked out of her apartment and the key being confiscated, his mother’s tears of fear and worry, with curfews, public humiliation and violence. No wonder that his stepfather was incessantly trying to find a way to leave the country. Promising reactions were slow in coming, but on December 7, 1938, just days after receiving a promise of an affidavit for immigration to the US, Harry was excited to record that from Australia too, a positive answer had arrived. According to an earlier entry, his stepfather had called on the British commission for Australia, which was visiting Vienna, in early November, but had been told to expect a waiting period of eight to nine months.

TAGS: affidavits, Anschluss, antisemitism, children, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, December 7, diary, emigration, immigration procedures, imprisonment, Jewish property, Vienna, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Harry Kranner Fiss Collection, AR 25595

Original:

Box 1, folder 12

12

Saturday

12

Not a trace of uncle Arthur

Concentation camp as collective punishment

“For the time being, only two regulations have been announced: the first one was that by January, all Jewish businesses have to be liquidated. And the second, that a fine of 1 billion is being imposed upon the Jews. Brrrrrr!”

Vienna

Harry Kranner was a boy of 12 when the Nazis staged a wave of anti-Jewish violence unprecedented in scope and intensity – purportedly a “spontaneous outburst of popular rage” in reaction to the murder of an employee of the German embassy in Paris at the hand of a young Jew. However, Harry’s diary entries show that he was keenly aware of the events around him. In the early morning of November 10th, when the violent events of the night spilled over from Germany into Austria, two Gestapo officers had come to the family’s home in Vienna – ostensibly in search of weapons. Harry understood how extraordinarily lucky he was to have gotten away with nothing more than a scare. He had heard about Jews being locked into or out of their apartments. But one big worry remained: by November 12th, there was still no trace of his uncle Arthur, who had been arrested along with thousands of other Jews. Following a news report that all arrestees were to be deported to the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps from the Vienna Westbahnhof, Harry’s father and aunt rushed there, hoping to find uncle Arthur, but to no avail. Meanwhile, it was reported that the Jews were going to be charged a hefty penalty for the violence to which they themselves had fallen victim.

TAGS: antisemitism, children, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, diary, economic persecution, family, family separation, imprisonment, Jewish property, kristallnacht, Mauthausen, Nazi policies, November 12, November Pogrom, Vienna, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Harry Kranner Fiss Collection, AR 25595

Original:

Box 1, folder 12

Source available in English

Chronology of major events in 1938

Elimination of Jews from economic life

A destroyed Jewish business in Magdeburg following the Pogromnacht of November 1938.

The National Socialist government issues an “Order on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life. ”From now on, Jews may not operate retail stores or practice a trade. The law also forbids Jews from selling goods or services. A few weeks later, on December 3, Jews will be forced to sell their real estate and surrender other assets.

View chronology of major events in 1938

23

FRIDAY

23

From Dachau to Buchenwald

Fritz Löhner, a.k.a. Beda, is deported

DACHAU/BUCHENWALD

Only one day after the “Anschluss” Fritz Löhner was arrested in Vienna and shortly thereafter deported to the concentration camp at Dachau. Löhner was born in Bohemia in 1883. As a young child, he moved with his parents to Vienna. By the 1920s, Beda, as Fritz Löhner sometimes called himself, had become one of the most renowned opera librettists in Vienna. On top of that, he wrote numerous lyrics (some still known today), not to mention satires and pieces for cabaret, always with a clear attitude: his time as an officer in World War I had turned him against the military. On the 23rd of September 1938, the Nazis transferred him from Dachau to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, artists, Buchenwald, Concentration Camps, Dachau, imprisonment, photo, prominent people, September 23, Vienna, violence, WWI veteran

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Original:

Photography of Fritz Löhner; Inv. No. 24627

26

TUESDAY

26

The League for Human Rights

“These Dogs of Hitler and Göring will never succeed”

“The Jewish sense of charity will not die, and these bastards Hitler and Göring will never get their wish to see the emigrants die in the gutter.”

Brünn/Rishon LeZion

Hugo Jellinek was a man of many talents. The outbreak of WWI forced him to quit medical school in Vienna. As a soldier, he was severely wounded in Samarkand and fell in love with his nurse, who later became the mother of his three daughters. The couple settled down in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. His young wife having died in 1926, he fled the Soviet Union in 1930 and ultimately returned to Vienna, where he utilized his knowledge of 8 languages as a translator and also worked as a freelance journalist. Thanks to a warning about impending arrest by the Nazis, he was able to escape to Brünn (Czechoslovakia) in June 1938. His eldest daughter, eighteen year-old Gisella Nadja, departed for Palestine the same day. In this colorful letter, Hugo shows fatherly concern for Nadja’s well-being, but also talks at length about the hardship he himself has faced as a refugee and reports that his cousin’s son is interned at the Dachau Concentration Camp. He mentions with gratification what he calls the “League,” probably referring to the aid center of the “League for Human Rights,” which was looking after the refugees, defying Hitler’s sinister goals. Ultimately, however, the most important thing for him was the fight for a country of one’s own.

TAGS: advocates, Brünn, children, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, displacement, emigration, family, family separation, imprisonment, July 26, Language skills, letter, Palestine, refugees, Rishon LeZion, welfare organizations, WWI, WWI veterans, Youth Aliyah, Zionism

SOURCE

Institution:

Letters, Documents and Images of the Jellinek Family Confronting the Holocaust, created by Paulette Jellinek

Collection:

Letter from Hugo Jellinek to Gisella Nadja Jellinek

7

TUESDAY

7

Unbearable despair

Jewish Telegraphic Agency publishes list of recent suicides

“4 Deaths Announced Among Arrested Jews in Vienna; Family of 4 Committs suicide”

Vienna

The Anschluss, Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938, precipitated a wave of anti-Jewish violence. Emboldened by their new status and by the utter defenselessness of the Jewish population, Nazis and their sympathizers entered Jewish homes and seized whatever property they liked. Jewish-run businesses were ransacked or destroyed, and Jews of all ages were forced to carry out the demeaning task of scrubbing streets to remove political slogans under the eyes of jeering onlookers. With no protection to be expected from police, a feeling of utter abandonment and hopelessness drove many Jews to take their own lives. In the first two months after the Anschluss, 218 Jews escaped the state-sanctioned cruelty by taking their own lives. The JTA’s June 7 dispatch lists the most recent suicides—including that of a family of four—and deaths at the Dachau concentration camp.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, Concentration Camps, Dachau, economic persecution, family, Jewish property, Journalism, JTA, June 7, media coverage, Vienna, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“4 Deaths Announced Among Arrested Jews in Vienna; Family of 4 Commits Suicide”

Source available in English

3

FRIDAY

3

Left in the dark

No information for the families of thousands of incarcerated Jews

“Whether all or a few of the several thousand arrested have been sent to Dachau or to Styria or whether they will soon be released is a matter of frightening uncertainty. The events of the past few days will never be erased from the minds of thousands of women here.”

VIENNA

Nobody saw fit to inform the worried wives of thousands of Jewish men arrested by the Nazis about their spouses’ whereabouts and the expected period of imprisonment. Many of them decided to go to the Rossauer Lände detention facility and the central police station in order to get information on the whereabouts of their loved ones. According to this June 3 report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the detainees had been taken away in overcrowded railroad cars, many of them forced to remain in uncomfortable positions for up to five hours before departure. While there were intimations that those sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany would be exploited as construction workers in order to enlarge the camp and subsequently be released, many had no idea where their husbands were. The author of the report sees the “extraordinary callousness with which police have withheld information” as “one of the most terrifying aspects of the situation.”

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, commentary, Concentration Camps, Dachau, family, family separation, imprisonment, Journalism, JTA, June 3, media coverage, Vienna, violence

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Nazis to Use Jewish Prisoners to Enlarge Dachau”

Source available in English

24

TUESDAY

24

Soldier, pacifist, cabaret artist

Fritz Grünbaum interned at Dachau

“I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.”

DACHAU

After three decades of making his fellow Austrians laugh, cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum’s career was brought to an abrupt end by the Anschluss. His politics alone would have sufficed to make him intolerable for the new regime: Grünbaum had returned from action in World War I not only a decorated soldier but also an avowed pacifist. As for Nazism, he did not mince words. Since 1933, he had been getting more political, and when during a 1938 performance a power outage caused the stage lights to go out, he commented glibly, “I see nothing, absolutely nothing. I must have accidentally gotten myself into National Socialist culture.” His last performance at the famous cabaret “Simpl” in Vienna just two days before the Anschluss was followed by an artistic ban on Jews. Grünbaum and his wife Lilly, a niece of Theodor Herzl, tried to flee to Czechoslovakia but were turned back at the border. On May 24, he was interned at the Dachau concentration camp. Grünbaum was also known as a serious art collector, mostly of modernist Austrian works, and a librettist.

TAGS: Anschluss, artists, Concentration Camps, cultural life, Dachau, imprisonment, May 24, persecution of Jewish professionals, photo, politics, prominent people, refugees, Vienna, WWI, WWI veterans

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Original:

Fritz Grünbaum at roll call in Dachau; Inv. No. 24631

28

THURSDAY

28

Liesl

Political opponents in jail

“I continue to do all that is necessary in your matter. The gentlemen are most accommodating, but due to being overburdened, they cannot handle everything so quickly.”

VIENNA

During the years of the authoritarian regime installed in Austria in 1934 (“Austrofascism”), the police prison at Rossauer Lände in Vienna (nicknamed “Liesl” by the locals) had already been used as a lockup not only for criminals but also for political dissidents. After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938 (“Anschluss”), the first 150 Austrians were taken to the Dachau concentration camp from this notorious prison. Some, like Edmund Wachs, were held there in “protective custody,” a convenient tool used by the nazis to rid themselves of Jews and political opponents, since it could be imposed arbitrarily and left the prisoners little or no recourse to legal support. In this postcard, Edmund’s brother, the attorney Dr. Karl Wachs, reassures Edmund that he is doing everything he can to press his case and asks him for patience.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, April 28, Concentration Camps, Dachau, family, family separation, Fascism, imprisonment, Nazi policies, persecution, postcard, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin

Collection:

Edmund and Berta Wachs Collection, AR 25093.

Original:

Box 1, folder 6

14

THURSDAY

14

Persecution in Austria, release from Dachau

Nazis in Austria pass a series of laws and directives

Vienna

Little more than a month after the Nazi takeover of Austria, a cascade of new regulations and actions taken by the new regime leaves little room for optimism. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports for April 14 from Vienna that Jews within 50 kilometers of the Czechoslovak border are to be expelled. Nazi commissars will be put in charge of Austrian businesses at the latter’s expense. According to the JTA, in the case of hundreds of Jewish-owned businesses, this provision has already been enforced. Finally, a law has been introduced establishing new procedures for determining the racial status of illegitimate children. The one positive item in this substantial dispatch is the prospect that all Jews currently interned at the Dachau concentration camp will not only be released but will also receive permits to enter Palestine.

TAGS: Anschluss, antisemitism, April 14, Aryanization, children, Concentration Camps, Dachau, dispossession, economic persecution, expulsion, Journalism, JTA, media coverage, Nazi laws, Nazi policies, Palestine, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Collection:

“Jews Along Entire Czechoslovak Border Slated for Expulsion by Nazis”

Source available in English

1

FRIDAY

1

Hotel Métropole

A luxury hotel turned Gestapo quarters

Vienna

Situated on Morzinplatz in Vienna’s central 1st District, the Hotel Métropole had been built for the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873. The luxurious building, designed by architects Carl Schumann and Ludwig Tischler, boasted a magnificent dining room and a splendorous inner court. After the Annexation of Austria, the Gestapo confiscated the hotel from its Jewish owners, and on April 1, 1938, the secret police began operations in their new headquarters in Vienna. With a staff of 900, it was the largest of the Gestapo offices in the Reich. The first order issued from the new headquarters was to transport a group of Austrian prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp. This photograph shows a tablecloth used at Hotel Métropole in better days.

TAGS: Anschluss, April 1, Concentration Camps, Dachau, dispossession, economic persecution, imprisonment, Jewish property, Nazi policies, photo, Vienna

SOURCE

Institution:

Jüdisches Museum Wien

Collection:

Tablecloth from Hotel Metropol

Original:

Inv. No. 20526

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