Black Earth(36)

In February 1938, Hitler summoned the Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, to his residence in the Bavarian Alps. Like his predecessor Dollfu?, Schuschnigg represented the Christian Socials and the Fatherland Front—and thus the sovereign Austrian Right that was opposed to Anschluss. Hitler demanded concessions that would have meant the end of Austrian sovereignty. Schuschnigg was intimidated, but upon his return to Vienna he regained his spine. In defiance of Hitler, he called a referendum on Austrian independence. Hitler was using the language of self-determination to press a German claim on what Hitler thought were German territories, so let the Austrian people decide. Schuschnigg was sure that he would win the referendum: The question was full of so many desiderata as to make clear that the correct answer was “yes”; the voting was to be open rather than secret; ballots were to be issued with answers already printed; much of the Austrian population really did favor independence in 1938; and, in any event, his regime was an authoritarian one that could arrange the results as necessary.

The days of March 9 and 10, 1938, were devoted to propaganda in favor of Austrian independence, over the radio, in the newspapers, and, following Austrian traditions, in signs painted on the streets of Vienna. The main propaganda slogan was simply ?sterreich—Austria. Abandoned by its former ally Italy and ignored by Great Britain and France, the country had no external backers. In rallying internal support, Schuschnigg was hoping to make a case against Hitler’s claims that European powers might heed. Hitler, understanding the risks, threatened to invade. Under this second round of threats, Schuschnigg yielded. No referendum took place.

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Erika M. was right: Everything really did change overnight. On the evening of March 11, Austrians sat close to their radios to hear an important announcement from the chancellor. This was a Friday night, but Erika’s family, like other observant Jews, broke the Sabbath to listen to the radio. Although this was probably not a case of immediate threat to a particular person, which would technically justify the violation of Jewish law, Viennese Jews were right to think that this radio address was a matter of life and death. At 7:57 p.m. Schuschnigg announced his decision not to defend Austria from Hitler. At that moment the Austrian state in effect ceased to exist. Formal power passed to an Austrian Nazi lawyer, Arthur Sey?-Inquart, whose program involved the termination of the entity he now governed. Popular opinion assimilated the meaning of the end of Austria far more quickly than even Nazis in Vienna or Berlin expected. That same evening crowds appeared on the streets, shouting Nazi slogans and looking for Jews to beat. That first night of lawlessness in Austria was more dangerous for Jews than the preceding two decades of Austrian statehood. Their world was gone.

The next morning the “scrubbing parties” began. Members of the Austrian SA, working from lists, from personal knowledge, and from the knowledge of passersby, identified Jews and forced them to kneel and clean the streets with brushes. This was a ritual humiliation. Jews, often doctors and lawyers or other professionals, were suddenly on their knees performing menial labor in front of jeering crowds. Ernest Pollak remembered the spectacle of the “scrubbing parties” as “amusement for the Austrian population.” A journalist described “the fluffy Viennese blondes, fighting one another to get closer to the elevating spectacle of the ashen-faced Jewish surgeon on hands and knees before a half-dozen young hooligans with Swastika armlets and dog-whips.” Meanwhile, Jewish girls were sexually abused, and older Jewish men forced to perform public physical exercise.

The symbolic destruction of Jewish status was accompanied by and enabled theft from Jews. On March 11, 1938, about seventy percent of the residential property on the Ringstrasse, the beautiful circular avenue that encloses Vienna’s first district, had belonged to Jews. From the dawn of the twelfth of March, that percentage decreased by the hour. Jewish businesses were marked as such, and the automobiles of Jews were stolen. The SA had made lists of Jewish apartments that their members wanted for themselves, and this was their chance. Jewish professors and judges were driven from their offices. Austrian Jews began to commit suicide: seventy-nine in March, and then sixty-two more in April.

The “scrubbing parties” were also political. Jews were cleaning the streets at certain places, working with acid, brushes, and their bare hands to remove one sort of mark. They were erasing a word that had been painted on Vienna’s avenues only a few days before: “Austria.” That word had been the slogan of Schuschnigg’s referendum propaganda, of which Jews could now be portrayed as the organizers. It was also the name of a state of which Jews had been citizens. Jews were unwriting Austria, and they were doing it within the circles of onlookers on the streets, under the gazes and the grins.