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  4. Forced Emigration of the Jews of Burgenland: Test Case

Forced Emigration of the Jews of Burgenland: Test Case

Milka Zalmon

  1. Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) Martin Broszat, “Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’: An Assessment of David Irving’s Theses,” Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 13 (1979), pp. 73-126; Czeslaw Madajczyk, “Hitler’s Direct Influence on Decisions Affecting Jews during World War II", Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 20 (1990), pp. 53-68; Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann Männer (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1993) pp. 13–22; Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1–133; Leni Yahil, “Some Remarks about Hitler’s Impact on the Nazis’ Jewish Policy,” Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 23 (1993), pp. 281-294.
  2. See proceedings of historical symposium in Stuttgart in 1984: Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, eds., Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985).
  3. See Jacob Toury, “From Forced Emigration to Expulsion - the Jewish Exodus over the Non-Slavic Borders of the Reich as a Prelude to the “Final Solution,” Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 17 (1987), pp. 51-92; Broszat, “Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’,” p. 85.
  4. Remarks by Göring at a meeting on November 12, 1938; Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margaliot, Documents on the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1981), p. 108.
  5. Documents on the Holocaust, p. 109. The “green border” was a border zone that could be crossed clandestinely because it was not demarcated by guard stations; Gerhard Wahrig, Deutsches Wörterbuch (Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1978), p. 1623; See also Jacob Toury, “From Forced Emigration to Expulsion – the Jewish Exodus over the Non-Slavic Borders of the Reich as a prelude to the ‘Final Solution’,” Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986), p. 60.
  6. Eisenstadt was designated the capital; Elizabeth (De) Weis, “Dispute for the Burgenland in 1919,” Journal of Central European Affairs, III (1943), pp. 147–166.
  7. Wolfgang Dax ,“Burgenländisches Landesrecht,” 50 Jahre Burgenland, Burgenländische Forschungen Sonderheft III (Eisenstadt: Burgenländischen Landesarchiv, 1971), p. 50. On Burgenland’s Status under Nazi rule, see note 77 below.
  8. Additional Jews lived in small localities that did not maintain autonomous community life, such as Forchtenau, near Mattersburg; these Jews received religious and educational services from the community nearest them. Shmuel Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoir (Hebrew), (Bnei Brak: Machon Zikaron, 2000), pp. 119–121.
  9. Zalmon, The Community of Deutschkreutz, p. 13.
  10. Radomir Luza, Österreich und die grossdeutche Idee in der NS-Zeit (Vienna, Köln, Graz: Hermann Bölaus Nachf., 1977), p. 295.
  11. Felix Tobler, “Zur Frügeschichte der NSDAP in Burgenland 1923–1933, Hans Chelmar, ed., Burgenland 1938, Burgenländische Forschubngen, vol. 73 (Eisenstadt: Burgenländischen Landesarchiv, 1989), p. 82.
  12. Gerhard Botz, Die Eingliederung österreichs in das Deutsche Reich (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1972), p. 82.
  13. Reinhard Pohanka, Pflichterfüller. Hitlers Helfer in der Ostmark (Vienna: Picus Verlag, 1997), p. 125. The area was depopulated during the Turkish Wars (seventeenth century) and repopulated by Protestant peasants who had been driven out of Germany.
  14. In 1936 he was also awarded an LL.D. degree in Vienna; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW), 13.020.
  15. Botz, Die Eingliederung österreichs, p. 83.
  16. Herbert Steiner, “Das Schicksal der Juden, Kroaten und Zigeuner im Burgenland nationalsozialistischen Annexion im Marz 1938,” Chelmar, ed., Burgenland 1938, p. 113.
  17. Gerald Schlag, “Der 12 März 1938 im Burgenland, und seine Vorgeschichte,” ibid. p. 111.
  18. Grenzmark Burgenland, April 5, 1938.
  19. DöW, 11532.
  20. Tobler, Zur Frügeschichte, p. 86.
  21. Burgenländische Freiheit, October 21, 1930, vol. 10, no. 44.
  22. Ibid.
  23. Der Kampf was published between March 7, 1931, and June 22, 1933.
  24. Volksstimme für Niederösterreich und Burgenland was published between September 5, 1931, and September 22, 1932.
  25. Ibid., December 5, 1931, p. 4.
  26. Ibid, November 14, 1931, p. 2.
  27. Otto Fritsche, “Die NSDAP im Burgenland 1933–1938” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Vienna, 1993), p. 211.
  28. The report on Hitler’s meeting with Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden on February 12, 1938, and the clemency that Seyss-Inquart proclaimed, on February 19, for all imprisoned Nazi party members—including conspirators in the failed putsch of July 1934—inspired the Burgenland Nazi party, too, to embark on vigorous activity, amid hopes that Germany would annex Austria; Schlag, “Der 12 März,” p. 100.
  29. Schlag, “Der 12 März,” p. 104.
  30. Odilo Globocnik (1904–1945), head of the Austrian Nazi party from 1931, and a passionate supporter of the annexation of Austria; Pohanka Pflichterfüller, pp. 64–75.
  31. According to Portschy in testimony given at his trial, August 13, 1946, in Eisenstadt, 20,000 persons took part in the demonstration; DÖW, Dok. 13020.
  32. August Ernst, “Auflösung und Aufteilung des Burgenlandes im Jahre 1938,” Chlemar, ed., Burgenland 1938, p. 119; Schlag, “Der 12 März,” pp. 105–108.
  33. Schlag, “Der 12 März,” p.108, emphasis mine.
  34. Ibid., p. 109.
  35. These were members of Bürckel’s staff; see Peter Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt 1969), p. 143.
  36. Schlag, “Der 12 März,” p. 107.
  37. Some time later Schwede-Coborg attempted to have the Jewish population in his area removed to the East. He was the first to take this action within the confines of the “Old Reich.” Toury, “From Forced Emigration to Expulsion".
  38. Schlag, “Der 12 März,” pp. 108–111.
  39. DÖW, 11278.
  40. Stones were thrown at Jews’ homes in the northern communities of Eisenstadt, Mattersburg, Deutschkreutz, and Frauenkirchen; testimony of a member of the Jewish community council, Jonny Moser, “Die Juden,” in Widerstand und Verfolgung in Burgenland 1934-1945, Eine Dokumentation (Vienna: Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, 2.Auflage, 1979), p. 304, Dok. 13; and testimony of the chairman of the Frauenkirchen Jewish community administration, ibid., p. 313. Dok. 12.
  41. As evidenced in a statistical table produced by the Jewish community administration of Vienna, which notes the number of Burgenland Jews who stayed in Vienna between June 17 and July 31, 1938; Central Jewish Historical Archives in Jerusalem (CJHA), KAU 384/8.
  42. Herbert Steiner, “Das Schicksal der Juden, Kroaten und Zigeuner im Burgenland nach der nationalsozialistischen Annexion im Marz 1938,” Chlemar, ed., Burgenland 1938, pp. 113– 114.
  43. According to the statistical table drawn up by the Vienna community, on June 17, 1938, 262 Jews from Deutschkreutz were staying in Vienna, as opposed to thirty-five from Mattersburg. This indicates that Jews were expelled more quickly from Deutschkreutz than from Mattersburg. At that time only 537 of 3,199 Jews in the other communities were staying in Vienna; CJHA, KAU 384/8. The last person to leave was David Weiner, a teacher whom the Nazi authorities forced to stay until the Gestapo gave an order to the contrary. Interview by the author with Mrs. Esther Gazit, December 24, 1993, Tel Aviv. The events were described in detail in David Wiener’s statement about forfeiture of his property. See Zalmon, Community of Deutschkreutz, Appendix 12, and interviews by the author with members of the community : Jehoshua Neubauer, June 1997, Jerusalem; Wolf Spiegel, summer 1993, Bnei Brak. “All the Jews in Frauenkirchen and Deutschkreutz … were arrested by the Gestapo, their property was confiscated …. Most of them had been affluent businessmen and wine merchants. They were forced to declare their property and state where they wished to emigrate to ….”, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York, March 31, 1938. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 301, Dok. 5. On April 4, the JTA reported the imprisonment of Jewish women, children, and the elderly in Fraunkirchen, Deutschkreutz, Kittsee, and Eisenstadt on March 26, and an explicit order to them to leave the German Reich within three days; ibid., p. 302, Dok. 10.
  44. According to the Vienna community administration, eighty-seven of the ninety-five Jews in this community were in Vienna at the end of July; Herbert Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung. Die Juden in Österreich 1938-1945 (Vienna, Munich: Herold, 1978), p. 88.
  45. Interview by the author with Mordechai Grünsfeld of Lackenbach, January 4, 1994, Tel Aviv.
  46. Interview by the author with Josef Wissberger, Tel Aviv, and Shmuel Hirsch, October 20, 1998, Bnei Brak. See also Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoir, pp. 46–48.
  47. Ibid., p. 73.
  48. Ibid., p. 77.
  49. Ibid., p. 83.
  50. See testimony of Adv. Dr. Josef Hoffer of Eisenstadt, Moser, Die Juden, p. 300 Dok. 4: “I was arrested on March 13, 1938. Policemen from the police station in Eisenstadt visited me, accompanied by two SA men. I was taken to a prison cell that was meant for five people. Twenty men, members of the civil service and the government, were in detention there. I was held for about fifteen days. SS and Gestapo men beat and tortured the prisoners.” The particular reason for harassing him becomes clear in Dok. 40, ibid. p. 316: the villa where he lived was worth an estimated 40,000 marks.
  51. The community was known as Unterburg-Eisenstadt; Jacob Toury, “Jewish Towns in the Austrian Empire” (Hebrew), Zemanim, II, Winter 1980, pp. 4–15.
  52. Announcement from the Kommissar of Eisenstadt police to the State Administration with regard to sealing the Central Archives of the Jewish Communities in Eisenstadt-Unterburg, March 31, 1938; Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 312, Dok. 27.
  53. After studying the documents and the captions within the lists that he prepared for the Central Archives in Eisenstadt, I found that this bureaucrat had done his work devotedly throughout World War II. The archives administration, Dr. J. Zeedoch, and Dr. H. Prickler, confirmed my assessment in August 1996; Kunnert, the director of the Burgenland archive under the Nazis (1938-1945), was a Nazi ideologue who made anti-Semitic speeches even after all the Jews had been expelled from Burgenland. His speeches were published in Tobias Portschy’s newspaper, Grenzmark Burgenland, on March 23, 1940, and February 5, 1942. See Zalmon, Community of Deutschkreuz, chap. 5, p. 17.
  54. One of the Eisenstadt community dignitaries, Heft; J. Klampfer “Das Eisenstadter Ghetto,” Burgenlaendische Forschungen, Heft, 88 (Eisenstadt: Burgenländischen Landesarchiv, 1965), p. 51.
  55. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 304, Dok. 13.
  56. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung, p. 46.
  57. Ibid.
  58. Several of them were arrested in Bratislava, transferred to Hungary and Austria, and housed in barracks. A few others were placed aboard a French vessel and Jewish organizations furnished them with entry visas to various countries; Moser, “Die Juden,” pp. 307–310, Dok. 16, 17, 20–24.
  59. “In the first night the Jews were expelled to Czechoslovakia. Next morning the Czechs caught them and pushed them across into Hungary. From Hungary they were returned to Germany and then to Czechoslovakia. That way they traveled around and around. In the end they finished up on an old barge on the Danube. They stayed there and wherever they tried to land they were turned away again…. For two weeks, in effect, a number of Jews emigrated every midnight. That was in Burgenland.” Documents on the Holocaust, p. 109.
  60. Jonny Moser, “Die Vertreibung der Burgenländischen Juden,” Das Jüdische Echo, no. 356 (1987), p. 80.
  61. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 296, Dok. 18, 21, 35, 36.
  62. Hugo Gold, Güssing; idem, ed., Gedenkbuch der untergegangenen Judengemeinden des Burgenlandes (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1970), p. 81.
  63. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 319, Dok. 49, 50.
  64. On August 11, 1938, the head of the Gestapo in Eisenstadt, Bovensifpen, gave his superiors in Vienna a report to this effect; ibid., p. 319, Dok. 48.
  65. Ibid., p. 297.
  66. Ibid., p. 319, Dok. 49.
  67. Ibid., p. 326, Dok. 67.
  68. To Palestine, the United States, China, other European countries, and South America; ibid., p. 320, Dok. 51.
  69. Eugen Lindenfeld, born in Mattersburg, had taught at the Jewish school in Eisenstadt. He mediated between the Gestapo and the Jews in his community after the rabbi and ritual slaughterer refused to do so. Interview by the author with his brother-in-law, Yehuda Steiner, Oct. 26, 1998, Ra’anana, Israel.
  70. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 322. According to this document, the Gestapo in Eisenstadt gave Lindenfeld a verbal order to hand over this list.
  71. Interview by the author with Wolf Spiegel, June 1997, Bnei Brak; and Jehoshua Neubauer, June 1997, Jerusalem.
  72. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 316, Dok. 40; DöW, 130/47.
  73. The synagogue in Mattersburg, for example, was bombed in 1938; Hans Paul, 50 Jahre Stadtgemeinde Mattersburg (Mattersburg, 1976), p. 204. The synagogue in Deutschkreutz was unscathed until early 1941; Alfred Zistler, “Geschichte der Juden in Deutschkreutz,” Hugo Gold, ed., Gedenkbuch, p. 63.
  74. At the November 12, 1938, meeting in Göring’s bureau, Heydrich stated explicitly that the expulsion of the Jews of Burden had been “illegal”; Documents on the Holocaust, p. 109.
  75. DöW, 11151.
  76. After Josef Bürckel, who had been appointed as Reichskommissar, released a statement “about the reunification of Austria and the Reich” and the reconstitution of Austria; Hermann Hagspiel, Die Ostmark (Vienna, 1995), p. 225. The political structure of the Austrian Republic was totally transformed. The Austrian states (Bundesländer) were abolished, and the country was divided into seven districts that corresponded to the Nazi party’s administrative partitioning of Austria back in the 1920s. Burgenland was divided between the Lower Danube District and Styria, thereby terminating its autonomous existence as an Austrian Land. Austria ceased to exist as an independent state and became the Ostmark, one of the provinces of “Greater Germany.” Erich Zöllner, Geschichte österreichs (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1979), p. 525.
  77. DöW, 11292.
  78. The form was to be filled out with details about place of residence, religion, marital status, and an itemized list of belongings; Burgenländisches Landesarchiv Eisenstadt, Jüdische Zentral-Archiv. B.L.A.E., J.Z.A, Arisierungsakten des nördlichen Burgenländes Karton 67.
  79. DöW, 13013; Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoir, p. 83. According to this testimony, about ten families were summoned to the district administration and ordered to sign the waiver form. “At the end, it was made clear to them that they must leave German Reich territory by May 20.”
  80. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 295.
  81. Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, p. 225.
  82. Announcement from Eisenstadt police, Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 317, Dok. 42.
  83. 1709 (RGBL) Reichsgesetzblatt. I, ibid., p. 327, Dok. 70.
  84. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 329, Dok. 76.
  85. The first edition of the newspaper appeared on March 26, 1938.
  86. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 316, Dok. 49.
  87. Hans Chmelar, “Warheit oder Propaganda? Die Zeitungen des Burgenland und ihr Anschlus” in idem. ed. , Burgenland 1938, p. 69.
  88. “The district of Tyrol-Voralberg can be considered cleansed of Jews.” Announcement by the Gauleiter of the Tyrol district in January 1939; see Hagspiel, Die Ostmark, p. 230.
  89. The Gauleiters of Carinthia and Styria released similar statements; ibid.
  90. Steiner, Das Schicksal der Juden, pp. 113–114. Moser, too, expresses a similar opinion about Portschy’s role in the persecutions; see Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 295.
  91. “Found guilty as a war criminal and a traitor to the Austrian nation in accordance with Paragraph 1(6) and 8 of the Law against War Criminals (of June 26, 1945). The trial was held in Eisenstadt on May 31, 1946, DöW, 30 020 Z: 22/Kr/46.
  92. Pohanka, Pflichterfüller, p. 131; including details of the accusations. For information on the death marches, see Eleonora Lappin, “The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945,” Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 28 (2000), pp. 203-242. I should note that although Portschy’s testimony is given in the article on the death march, the author does not mention Portschy’s trial itself and the fact that he was sentenced to prison for giving the order to kill the marchers.
  93. Otto Koch, born on September 29, 1908, in Halle a.d. Salle, was a Gestapo official who came straight from Germany to Eisenstadt; Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 295.
  94. Interview with the author, July 1994, Rechnitz, Austria.
  95. Himmler regularly stressed that he “did nothing without the Führer’s knowledge.” Yahil, “Some Remarks about Hitler’s Impact Notes on Hitler’s Involvement,” p. 287. Based on this assumption, it seems to me that the decisions regarding the “encouragement” of emigration from Germany and Austria may be attributed to Hitler.
  96. Otto Dov Kulka, “Examining the SS Policy on Jews in the First Countries Occupied,” Yalkut Moreshet I, 18 (October, 1974), pp. 166–167, document 1.
  97. Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter, p. 138.
  98. Ludwig Carsten, Faschismus in Österreich: Von Schoenerer zu Hitler, (Munich: W. Fink, 1977), p. 57.
  99. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 317, Dok. 43.
  100. Ibid., Dok. 42.
  101. Ibid., Doks. 59, 60, 61.
  102. DöW, 12535.
  103. In his memoirs, Shmuel Hirsch describes the appointment of the new district administration by the “new rulers.” The administration issued orders for the confiscation of all Jewish bank deposits, the closure of Jewish businesses, and the prohibition of payback of debts to Jews. Hirsch attributes the order to hand the Jewish shops over to the Kommissars to the district administration; Shmuel Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoirs, pp. 46-48.
  104. DÖW., Dok. 13012.
  105. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 310. Dok 23. “According to an oral instruction given to us by the district governor (Bezirkshauptmann), Dr. Westner on May 23, 1938.”
  106. Ibid., p. 317, Dok. 44.
  107. Ibid., p. 318, Dok. 45.
  108. Jüdische Zentral Archiv, Archiv der ehemaligen isr. Kultusgemeinde Deutschkreutz, A M 3 VII/1, 649.
  109. Ibid., p. 650.
  110. Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoirs, pp. 46-48.
  111. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 313, Dok. 33 ; see also the testimony of Shmuel Hirsch: “The Nazis appointed the long-time antisemite Franz (Lanz) as mayor .… Giefing discovered a new way of tormenting the Jews .… The mayor now forbade them to go out in public (except for the Winkelgasse) .… Jews who disobeyed were arrested! It was the mayor’s custom to ‘deal with them’ personally.” Hirsch, Mattersdorf Community Memoirs, p. 47.
  112. Adalbert Putz, “Der Werdegang von Deutschkreutz im Spiegel der Geschichte,” in Deutschkreutz (Deutschkreutz: Gemeinde Deutschkreutz, 1995), p. 137.
  113. Stefan Schöller, “Die politische Entwicklung der Gemeinde Deutschkreutz ab dem Jahr 1900,” ibid., p. 54.
  114. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 317, Dok. 41; see also statistical table, ibid., p. 319, Dok. 50.
  115. Safrian, Die Eichmann Männer, p. 34. During these weeks policy was inconsistent and riddled with contradictions. Three days after he arrived in Vienna, Eichmann gave instructions to close the community offices, arrest the leadership, and deport the president of the community and his two assistants to Dachau. In May 1939, he gave instructions to reorganize and reopen the community institutions as part of a new Jewish organization, which became the main implement of emigration as from the summer of 1938; Herbert Rosenkranz, “The Jews of Austria—between Forced Emigration and Deportation,” in Israel Gutman,ed., The Image of the Jewish Leadership in Nazi-Ruled Countries (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 56-57; Doron Rabinovici, Instanzen der Ohnmacht. Wien 1938-1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat (Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 2000), pp. 64-65.
  116. See Toury, “From Forced Emigration to Deportation,” p. 68.
  117. Ibid., p. 72.
  118. Hans Safrian, Die Eichmann Männer, p.36.
  119. In my interview with him, Portschy made no mention of Eichmann as the person who ordered the deportation of the Jews of Burgenland.
  120. Attorney General v. Adolf Eichmann, Office of the Prime Minister, Information Center, 1961–1963, letter dated April 23, 1938, testimony no. 1512; Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 294, note 6.
  121. Interviews by the author with Shmuel Hirsch and Josef Weissberger, summer 1996. In an interview with the author on January 4, 1994, Mr. Gruensfeld of Lackenbach said that Eichmann had a special interest in presenting Hitler with a Judenrein Burgenland as a birthday present (on April 20). Father Alfred Zistler made the same claim, attributing it to Portschy in an interview with the author on August 13, 1996, in Eisenstadt. There is no concrete proof of this.
  122. This was in order to head Division II-112, the Judenreferat (Jewish Affairs Office).
  123. Safrian, Die Eichmann Männer, p. 41; Rosenkranz, “The Jews of Austria,” p. 59. Rosenkranz gives August 26 as the day on which the office was set up.
  124. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 297.
  125. According to Weissberger’s testimony (summer 1996), when he was staying in Vienna in 1938, Eichmann gave him an emigration grant after he “threatened” not to leave the country. He also gave him a one-way ticket to Liberia. The purpose of the ticket was to trick the British, who feared that the deportees from Austria would come knocking at the gates of Palestine. The ticket is in Mr. Weissberger’s possession.
  126. DöW, 11278.
  127. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 319, Dok. 49.
  128. The editor was, after all, Portschy.
  129. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 301, Dok. 7.
  130. Portschy arrested and deported 232 men. The remainder, members of the Sinta and Roma tribes, were forced to do farm labor for 27 pfennigs per day; Pohanka, Pflichterfüller, p. 131.
  131. Portschy’s testimony at his trial, August 13, 1996; Eisenstadt, DÖW, Dok. 13020.
  132. Jacob Toury, “The Chain of Command in an Anarchist-Totalitarian Regime,” Yalkut Moreshet (Hebrew), 40 (Dec. 1985), p. 45. See also Yehoyakim Cochavi, “The Final Stage in the History of German Jewry” (Hebrew), in Abraham Margaliot and Yehoyakim Cochavi, eds., The History of the Holocaust—Germany (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1998), p. 331.
  133. Ibid., ibid. p. 50.
  134. Ibid., note 55.
  135. Jacob Toury, “Chain of Command,” pp. 59-60.
  136. To his last days, even at the price of conceding the existence of his fatherland and even after the total defeat of the Third Reich, Porschy professed absolute loyalty to Hitler and his doctrines, as I discovered in my interview with him in Rechnitz in July 1994. Further evidence of this loyalty surfaces in a videotape made at the initiative of DöW in Vienna. The subject is expanded in the chapter on the relations among the Gauleiters, Hitler, and Bormann; see Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter, pp. 195-200.
  137. The meaning of an “orderly evacuation” was to keep the Jews alive as far as possible. In her article, Lappin describes the different interpretations of this directive and states that some Gauleiters gave orders to give food to the Jews and to carry the sick on stretchers, while others brutalized and murdered the marchers; see more in Lappin, “The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews,” pp. 215-242.
  138. Hitler reserved the right to appoint and dismiss Gauleiters. All attempts to integrate them into the party apparatus failed; see Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter, pp. 195-200.
  139. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 301, Dok. 7.
  140. Quoted in Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HaperCollins, 1997) p. 177, based on Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragemente, Part I, Aufzeichnungen 1924- 1941, 4 volumes (Munich: Saur, 1987), vol. 3, p. 351.
  141. Portschy’s status in the party was not strong because of an internal struggle, in early 1938, between D. Josef Leopold of the SA and Hubert Klausner of the SD. After Hitler ruled in favor of the appointment of Klausner, Portschy was actually at risk of house arrest. He safeguarded his position by declaring his allegiance to Klausner. From then on he sought to prove his loyalty to the leader and his ways; Gerald Schlag, “Der 12 März 1938,” pp. 100–101.
  142. All opponents of the National-Socialist party were dismissed from their positions, and some were even sent to concentration camps, e.g., Governor Hans Sylvester, who died in Dachau; Ernst August, “Ausflösung und Aufteilung des Burgenlandes im Jahre 1938,” in Burgenland 1938 (Eisenstadt, 1989), p. 120.
  143. Jonny Moser, “Die Katastrophe der Juden in Österreich, 1938–1945, Studia Judaica Austriaca V (1977), p. 112.
  144. Interview with the author, Eisenstadt, summer 1996. Father Alfred Zistler wrote the history of the Jews of Deutschkreutz; See Zistler, “Geschichte der Juden in Deutschkreutz,” in Hugo Gold, ed., Gedenkbuch, pp. 57–75.
  145. Botz, Die Eingliederung, p. 156.
  146. Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 301, Dok. 7. News of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, New York, Bd. IV, Nr. 13, 14.4.1938.
  147. Cochavi, “The Final Stage,” p. 331.
  148. Ibid.
  149. Toury, “Chain of Command,” p. 49.
  150. Ibid., p. 50. Cochavi, “The Final Stage,” pp. 341-342; and Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, p. 116, n. 85.
  151. Hüttenberg, Die Gauleiter, p. 145. The same happened in the Netherlands. Even before the occupation, the local Nazi party had begun to use the term Duitse Westmark (the German western province); Dan Michman, The Holocaust and Holocaust Research (Hebrew) (Moreshet: Tel Aviv,1998; English forthcoming), p. 85.
  152. Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung, p. 89; August Ernst, “Zur Auflösung des Burgenlandes im Jahre 1938,” in Festschrift für Heinrich Kunnert, Burgenländische Forschungen Sonderheft II (Eisenstadt: Burgenländische Landesarchiv, 1969, pp. 42–43.
  153. Ernst, “Auflösung,” pp. 124–125. The Burgenland SD also viewed the Hungarians as highly dangerous; See Luza, österreich, p. 50.
  154. Toury, “Chain of Command,” p. 47.
  155. The term Abwanderung appears in several documents; see Moser, “Die Juden,” p. 302, Dok. 11, p. 319, Dok. 49.
  156. The policy was defined as Judenauswanderung until the summer of 1941. On January 1942, Heydrich stated, “Reichsmarschall Göring’s order has come into my possession as the Führer instructed, and instead of emigration, the Führer now authorizes only the transport of the Jews to the East.” Based on a record made by Undersecretary of State Martin Luther on August 21, 1942, Nuremberg Documents, NG 2586, quoted in Madajczyk, “Hitler’s Direct Influence on Decisions, ” p.49, no. 27.
  157. Toury, “From Forced Emigration to Deportation,” p. 83. Gauleiter Franz Schwede-Coburg of Stettin was the first to transfer the Jewish population eastward; ibid., p. 77. The Burgenland precedent of confiscating property also served as a model. On July 22, 1938, the Gestapo in Eisenstadt valued confiscated Jewish property at 800,000 marks, a much larger sum, proportionately, than that of the Jews of Vienna, whose property was valued on June 21, 1938, at 3,902,391.24 marks. According to the 1923 census, the Jewish population of Vienna was 201,513, forty-eight times greater than the 3,720 Jews counted in Burgenland at that time; Leo Goldhammer, “Von den Juden Österreichs,” in Löbel Taubes and Chajim Bloch, eds., Jüdisches Jaahrbuch für österreich (Vienna, 1932), p. 8.
  158. Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Introduction, pp. 4-5.
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