Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Do you remember at whatpoint things started to change in school? You said you started to hearanti-Semitic talk and.

Well, they rearranged our school district. Um, ithad been, I guess they felt too Jewish. So they rearranged it in some mannerand mixed them more so we were more of a minority and they brought in somepeople from a different school and they were more pro-Nazi than the rest. Andthat was when I was in-I was fourteen. What year was that, '34, 1934

So when Dollfuss came topower.

Yeah, Dollfuss came to power and Hitler was overthere. And, of course, when Dollfuss was murdered and all this we werediscussing that constantly in school.

Did your father thinkthat Schuschnigg was any better than Dollfuss?

Yes. Schuschnigg had a lot of people were very. Infact, my brother and I went out to demonstrate for Schuschnigg the night-thefew nights before the Anschluss and the Austrian police was chasing thedemonstrator who was demonstrating for Schuschnigg and [laughs] one of them hitme on the back.

Tell me more about that.

It was a lot of uh, different groups were fightingactually. They-the Nazis were demonstrating and my brother and I and a numberof other people of our acquaintance were demonstrating for Schuschnigg. Andwhen we got together and it looked like it was going to be a free for all thepolice moved in and moved us out. So apparently their sympathies were clearlyon the other side. Don't believe when they say that Austria was raped in '38.It was not.

You remember them thatmuch?

I remember distinctly that they were dancing in thestreets. I heard people talking, saying that the sun would rise, would shine, wouldcome through if Hitler walked through Austria. The majority of them would havefreely voted for him if they'd had a chance to freely vote. The vote actuallyof course was a yes or no. But the, the majority of them would have voted, theones that I saw. And many of my classmates, some of whom do not remember thisnow. It was also interesting they avoided that discussion of anything. Wetalked of the years before the war and the years after the war. But not theAnschluss or anything like that, they did not now want to discuss.

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