The socialist bookseller Josef Kende joined newspaper magnates such as Alexander Geller, Ernst Buchbinder and Paul Kolisch, and journalists like Bruno Heilig, Markus Siegelberg, Bela Felsenburg, Ernst Colbert, Rudolf Kalmar and Maximilian Reich. Raoul Auernheimer was the vice-president of Austrian PEN and a Mischling. Among the other Jews who had the honour of being among the first to go to Dachau was Franz Lehár’s librettist Fritz Löhner-Beda, the author of the lyrics for much of Hitler’s favourite music. In Buchenwald he wrote the camp song that the miserable prisoners had to sing during their travails. It was set to music by another unfortunate victim who arrived on a later transport, the violin virtuoso Hermann Leopoldi.iv Lehár could not intercede for Löhner-Beda with Hitler as he was protecting his own Jewish wife. Löhner-Beda was beaten to death in Auschwitz in 1942.v There was also one Nazi on that first transport, the Burgenland peasant Paul Hutfless. He had betrayed secrets to the Fatherland Front.11
Huber’s concern for elderly or infirm Jews was a sham. Bruno Heilig’s book, Men Crucified, first published in 1941, makes it abundantly clear what they faced. Heilig was arrested on 15 March and had been locked up in four prisons before the day came to ship him to Dachau. His book is a chilling record of brutality. The newspaper magnate Kolisch weighed twenty-two stone when he came to Dachau and was the butt of much cruelty. By the time he reached Buchenwald his weight had halved. The guards also singled out the Hohenberg brothers, whose work involved emptying the latrines. Prince Ernst died in the camp.
The work was literally backbreaking. Any answering back was rewarded with blows from horsewhips, kicks or beatings. The Jews were separated from the Aryans, having their own block. They were fairly treated by the old inmates. Their capo had been the public prosecutor in Stuttgart. They found Kurt Eisner, the son of the man who had led the Bolshevik revolution in Munich, Königsberger, a former minister in the Saxon government, and Scholem, quondam editor of the Rote Fahne.
A few weeks after the first Austrian transport, the camp received a visit from Heinrich Himmler. He paid particular attention to the Austrians, whom he endeavoured to humiliate. ‘You know that from now on you are in protective custody, that means I shall accord you my most special protection.’ He paused so that his retinue might voice their appreciation of his joke. He told the prisoners that they fell into four categories: professional criminals – they were the nicest; political prisoners – who were much more dangerous and would be given less protection; Jews – who belonged to the scum of mankind; the worst, however, were the communists.12 To Stillfried of Wöllersdorf he said: ‘So you see what it is like!’ Stillfried answered back: ‘Herr Reichsführer, I would truly love to say that we are treated here like your people were in Wöllersdorf!’ The others expected a reprisal, but none was forthcoming. Stillfried survived.13
At Wöllersdorf political prisoners had been detained without trial, but the Austrian camp was not to be compared with Dachau, unless you accepted Eric Gedye’s quip: ‘There was one thing in common between Wöllersdorf and Dachau. The Nazis seemed thoroughly to enjoy both.’14
Despite the grim existence led by the prisoners, there was a semblance of cultural life in Dachau. Sunday afternoons were free. Viktor Matejka put on a play written by Rudolf Kalmar strewn with oblique references to Hitler, which remained undetected by the guards. Grünbaum continued to perform with Paul Morgen and Hermann Leopoldi, and the Berliner dancer Kurt Fuss joined in. Jura Soyfer wrote a poem, the Dachauerlied (Song of Dachau). The rest of the time the prisoners were subjected to the whim not only of the guards but even of the commandant’s vicious dog and chimpanzee. In the middle of the brutality, there were flashes of mercy on the part of the guards, although these were few and far between. Maximilian Reich was occasionally protected by a young SS-man who had recognized him as the organizer of a football tournament.
It was just the beginning: ten days later some Salzburgers arrived at the camp. The delivery of 24 May brought the governors of Burgenland and Upper Austria as well as the later president of the National Council, Felix Hurdes. On 31 May there were also a number of police officers from the Vorarlberg. The transports to Dachau aroused international condemnation, particularly in Britain. This motivated Weizsäcker to seek an interview with Heydrich on 5 July 1938. Heydrich admitted to having 3,900 Austrians in ‘protective custody’. Weizsäcker sought to have all those released against whom no charges had been preferred. It transpired that most of the middle-class prisoners were indeed released before war broke out. Jews were let out if they could show that they had an entry visa for another country. The communists were often left to rot in the camps until the end of the war.15
Until the Jews arrived that April, Germany’s concentration camps had been filled with Gentiles, chiefly political prisoners and habitual criminals. Certain inmates had caught the attention of Corder Catchpool, particularly Fritz Küster of the Friedensgesellschaft (Peace Society), Hans Litten, a half-Jewish solicitor, the well-known Social Democrats Ernst Heilmann, Carlo Mierendorff and Kurt Schumacher, and the communist Theodor Neubauer. Like Gildemeester, Catchpool had been cleverly working his way into the Nazi regime’s good books by visiting German political prisoners in captivity in Lithuania and Czechoslovakia. There had been eighty in Lithuania, and there were still sixteen serving long sentences at the beginning of 1938.16 In February that year he estimated the German prison population to be between 110,000 and 120,000; ‘of these about a quarter are political cases, mostly undergoing long sentences’. Of course this did not include those in concentration camps, who had been neither tried nor sentenced.17
Himmler had been in Austria in March to scout around for a site for a new concentration camp, but they were still comparatively few in number. Sachsenhausen in the Berlin suburb of Oranienburg was as ancient as Dachau, having been created after the abolition of the ‘wild’ concentration camps that flourished after Hitler’s accession to power. Since then Buchenwald had opened on the Ettersberg in Weimar in 1937. Lichtenburg had been converted into a women’s camp. Esterwege, on the Dutch border, had gone, but Sachsenburg and Fühlsbüttel appeared to be still functioning.18
There was an expansion in the number of categories of prisoners eligible for ‘protective custody’ in 1938. That was going to mean more concentration camps, and the enlargement of existing ones. In the course of 1938, the population of Dachau tripled.19 Between 21 and 30 April, the Gestapo rounded up around 2,000 ‘workshy’ and took them to camps. In the summer Heydrich turned his attention to the ‘antisocial’. Each criminal department was to locate around two hundred gypsies, tramps, beggars, pimps, violent criminals and Jews with criminal tendencies. The arrests started on 13 June, with the police working their way through railway stations and dosshouses. Twenty-five years before, they might have arrested their own Führer. The bag totalled over 10,000. They were taken to a new generation of camps: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and Neuengamme, located close to quarries, because the SS needed labour for their own stone business.20
The arrival of ‘workshy’ and antisocial elements altered the social structure, swamping the communists and socialists who had previously been the mainstay of Sachsenhausen. The antisocials wore black triangles, as opposed to green for criminals and red for political prisoners. They were an incohesive group, and, although some ascended to the level of the green aristocracy among the prisoners, others fell victim to the terrible physical strain imposed by the camps, perishing in the mud or crushed to death in the quarries.
WHITHER SHALL I FLEE?
The Jews – the assimilated Jews in particular – had nowhere to go. With the Anschluss would-be immigrants to the United States were added into the tally for Germany, fixed at a little over 27,000 a year; Canada and Australia did not want their wide-open spaces polluted by Jews. Peter Fröhlich, who would later achieve fame as the cultural historian ‘Peter Gay’,vi was thrown out of his Gymnasium (grammar school) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. With a little flourish of Prussian decency, the boys were issued with proper leavin
g certificates, which recorded – fallaciously – that they had left to take up a profession.21
In July Fröhlich père had been fired from his job. The family then set to work applying for visas. That meant paying calls on consulates to pick up forms, typing out applications and applying for residences.
Since the Olympics, Berlin Jews had been enjoying a holiday from persecution, but after the Anschluss the authorities began to get rough. As the son of an Austrian Jew, Gerhard Beck and his family were obliged to quit their spacious flat in Weissensee and move into the Scheunenviertel – the nearest thing Berlin had to a ghetto. The only hope for them now was to join the endless queues that radiated from the offices of the Jüdischer Hilfsverein and enquire into the possibilities of emigration. Beck’s family soon came to the conclusion that escape was possible only if you were rich or a ‘Zionist zealot’. The Quakers offered Gerhard’s twin sister a way out if she were prepared to enter domestic service in Britain.22
The harassed Jews were prey to rumours. At the beginning of the month a ripple of optimism went through the community. It appeared that Australia was going to open its gates to the Jews and issue 6,000 visas. The rumour created siege conditions outside the British consulate in Vienna. Eventually the Australian Prime Minister Lyons released a clarification that Jews would only be admitted under the normal constraints of emigration. Two weeks later Miss Stamper at the PCO was forced to issue a leaflet to explain the separate policies on emigration of the various British colonies and dominions, Cyprus, Palestine and Australia in particular. It warned against bogus organizations that claimed to be able to help and had ‘sprung up like mushrooms, enriching themselves from Jewish misery’. At the consulate, Consul-General Gainer, Consul Taylor and Kendrick (who was responsible for Palestine) all handled the Jews with understanding and sympathy. On one occasion the SA forced the Jews in the queues to wash cars. After that the Consul-General issued a formal protest and allowed them to queue in the ‘neutral’ courtyard.
Despite the formal closure of the Swiss borders with Austria on 12 March, 3,000 Austrian Jews had managed to make it. Der Stürmer ran a particularly pungent caricature showing a ‘Kosher snack’: Jews crammed into a Swiss sardine tin.23 Dr Pifrader had demanded on 22 March and 27 April that passports be issued with identifying marks to show that the Jews had paid their taxes. Others crossed the border into Italy and obtained visas for Switzerland, until this loophole too was closed in August.24 Jews were still managing to cross the frontiers into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Jugoslavia, France, Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium, even though the only legal form was the Zionist solution as backed by Eichmann.
For Eichmann, Jews remaining on the premises, that is to say in Europe, formed Greuelzentralen or ‘centres of atrocity’. He wanted an end to assimilation – Germany had no foreign political interests in Palestine. The quickest method was to obtain a tourist visa to Palestine and then sit it out. Zionist organizations could effect this in Palestine itself.25 The British government was under fire: despite the rigidity of official policy there was an elasticity provided by the consular officials who took pity on individual cases. This meant that tens of thousands of Central European Jews did find a refuge in the Mandate.
THE PLEBISCITE
On the 10th a plebiscite was held throughout the Reich: Germans on both sides of the Inn were to voice their approbation for the Anschluss. Hitler concentrated on Austria in the days immediately before the poll. Spitzy travelled with him, staying in the Parkhotel in Graz and the renamed Österreichischer Hof in Salzburg – it was now the Salzburger Hof, as Austria was no more. On 7 April the Führer’s party was in Innsbruck. At the same time Cardinal Innitzer had travelled to Rome for a private interview with the Pope. The Supreme Pontiff was none too pleased with the head of the Austrian Church. The Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – ticked him off for the ‘unfavourable impression’ he had made by signing the bishops’ letter condoning the Anschluss. On 6 April, Osservatore Romano published an explanation: the Pope did not approve of anything that went against the laws of God or the freedom and rights of the Catholic Church. A particular sticking point was the assault on youth organizations.26
Berlin’s Bishop Preysing was more to the Pope’s liking. His view was not shared by Goebbels, who called the bishop a ‘clerical, un-German pig. This plague must be exterminated once and for all. They belong to Rome more than they do the commandment of the Fatherland.’27 Innitzer had another audience with Hitler on 9 April. The Roman declaration had naturally angered the Führer,28 but for the time being he forbore from punishing the Austrian Church, until the results of the plebiscite had come in.
Hitler’s campaign ended in Vienna on the 9th. He addressed hundreds of thousands of his faithful from the Rathaus. Vienna was a pearl, and he would find it an appropriate setting within the German nation. His language was steeped in piety, presumably as a sop to the Catholic Viennese. When he spoke to them a second time that day in the North West Station, Goebbels said it was ‘like Mass . . . at the end, it resembled a prayer’.
Even Goebbels enjoyed cult status. When Hitler appeared on the balcony of the Imperial, they called for him too: ‘Lieber Führer, ach ich bitt’, bring doch unseren Doktor mit.’vii Hitler and his Propaganda Minister travelled back to Berlin on the train on the 10th.29 Over breakfast they discussed plans. ‘The Führer wants to drive the Jews completely out of Germany, to Madagascar or whatever . . . a people smitten by God. Prague has also written them off.’ From the Jews they progressed to the princes: ‘They are worthless and must never be allowed back.’ They were satisfied that the Hohenbergs were out of the way. The Habsburgs were the worst: ‘Get rid of this rubbish.’ Hitler and Goebbels had also placed the dispossession of the Austrian nobility high up on his agenda.30
The result of the poll on the 10th was a 99.08 per cent ‘Ja’ for the Führer. In Austria there were just 11,929 ‘no’s. Goebbels feigned joyful surprise: ‘Germany has conquered a whole country with the ballot-slip.’ The plebiscite did, however, reflect the Führer’s popularity. It showed that Hitler was exceedingly successful in Germany at the time and it marked the high-water mark of his stature in the land of his birth. The vote had obviously been manipulated and the electorate cowed into saying ‘Ja’, as was proved by the near unanimous assent from Dachau concentration camp, but Hitler’s aims had struck a chord with national German aspirations; for the time being it was bloodless, and the plebiscite had been marginally fairer than that proposed by Schuschnigg:31 all Germans and Austrians over the age of twenty were eligible to vote, with the exception of Jews and criminals and the many thousands of suspects in Hitler’s gaols and camps. In Vienna some 300,000 voters had been deducted from the roll in this way.
The ballot was not exactly secret: a big circle contained the word ‘Ja’, a smaller one ‘Nein’. The voter’s name and address were printed on the back. Despite the pressure to conform, there were dissenters, like Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen:
I can now prove that the plebiscite to legitimize Hitler’s takeover of Austria was falsified in the crudest possible way. Together with the other four adults of my house, I naturally voted ‘No’. In addition, I know of at least twenty other reliable people in the town who did the same. Nevertheless, according to the official results, the town unanimously and without a single dissenting voice ‘approved the actions of the Führer’.32
Klemperer confirmed that no one believed it had been a secret ballot. He wondered whether Hitler was going to have himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Facsimiles of the pusillanimous letter signed by Austria’s bishops had been posted in prominent places throughout the Reich.33
Hitler’s appeal for the Austrians was not to last. The appropriation of so much of Austria’s wealth by the Reich and by Reich Germans; escalating prices; the failure to appoint Austrian Nazis to high office; the brutal treatment of the Church and its priests; the dastardly suppression of the old elite; the supercilious attitude which the Austrians liked to
associate with the dreaded Piefkeviii or Prussian – all contrived to make the honeymoon a short one.
The East Prussian writer Ernst Wiechert was arrested soon after the election and taken to a Gestapo prison to be interrogated. In the car from his home one of the secret policemen asked him if he had cast his vote. They knew that he had not. ‘Half an hour after the closing of the ballots they were careful to beat anyone who had written “No” half dead.’34 One of the very few who made his decision not to vote public was Bishop Sproll of Rottenburg. It was not that he disapproved of the merger, but he disliked the regime and did not wish to congratulate the Nazis. This led to a campaign against him by Gauleiter Murr that ended up with Sproll being banished from his diocese. Nazi thugs, led by Otto Sponer, the Kreisleiter of Reutlingen, wrecked his residence first. Goebbels approved these ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations: ‘The Bishop of Rottenburg did not vote. Now the people have erupted and are rioting in front of his palace. He is looking for protection, so now the state is good for something at least. He can protect himself. I shall not lift a finger.’ Sproll’s eviction established a precedent that would later be used in the cases of Cardinals Innitzer in Vienna and Faulhaber in Munich.35
The ‘Prussian’ Reck-Malleczewen was in Salzburg soon after the Anschluss and was able to witness the sort of scene that would put the Austrians off their new friends from the north:
1938: Hitler's Gamble Page 14