From Vienna to Albania

 

Once Hitler had annexed Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, all Austrian Jews, including our family, became stateless. Hundreds of Viennese Jews committed suicide in the weeks after the Anschluss anticipating the catastrophe lying in wait for them.

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On 14th March Hitler arrived in Vienna and was greeted by 200,000 cheering German Austrians gathered around the Heldenplatz (the Square of Heroes).

 

In May 1938 the Nuremburg Race Laws were introduced into Austria, prohibiting Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood."

 

In June 1938 a police order banned Jews from all Vienna public parks and gardens. Grandma recalls this saying:

           "The Jews were not allowed to sit on the benches and all sorts of things..…  It was worse in Austria than in Germany”.

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Jews were sacked from their jobs and their assets, property and businesses ‘Aryanised’ ie taken over, or closed down.

           “All the Jews lost their jobs there and we stayed at home. We started to think of emigrating but we couldn't find anybody to take us.  The road led us to America, the road led us to different places but you could never find anything.  Because everybody... wanted to get out.”

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She continues:

           “And then it got worse and worse, the people starting, you know, to take the men from the street and send them to the concentration camps”.

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Hedwig’s twin brother Viktor was taken from the street and put in prison. Hedwig visited the prison to beg for his release and because luckily he had a visa for London they let him out. He fled to London where he had connections in the fur trade and was able to resume a business.

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           “They let him out after long discussions with these horrible people there”. 

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So the situation was already dire for Viennese Jews but was about to escalate massively. Between the 9th and 10th November 1938, the Kristallnacht pogrom resulted in 30,000 Viennese Jews being rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht – the ‘night of broken glass’ also took place in broad daylight.

 

All but one of the 93 Synagogues and Jewish prayer-houses in Vienna were destroyed during Kristallnacht – including the city’s largest, the Leopoldstadter Temple, where Hedwig and Siegfried had married in 1928.

 

Grandma described how, during Kristallnacht,  "hoodlums" (Austrian fascist sympathisers rather than Nazi officers) burst into their apartment at 65 Obere Donaustrasse smashing the chandeliers and wireless. Grandpa hid in a wardrobe on the landing.

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Grandpa fled Vienna on the12th November 1938. Thankfully he had obtained an exit visa and his passport shows him leaving Austria and entering Italy on 24th November, where he stayed with his sister Else in Trieste, a popular departure point for escaping Jews to embark for Palestine.

 

At this point neither Grandma nor Dad had exit visas so the separation must have felt horrendous if unavoidable.

 

We know Grandpa was in Trieste on the 14th December 1938 as it was from here that he wrote a long poem for and about Dad describing him affectionately as a boy reluctant to tidy up his toys but who loved schnitzel!

 

Grandpa arrived in Durres, Albania on January 30th 1939 . Grandma and Dad arrived there in February/March 1939.

 

What a relief it must have been to be reunited once again. 

 

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HS 2020