1938 (14 page)

Beck’s chosen weapon was the memorandum. These memos were dispatched to Brauchitsch and mocked by Hitler. In the first half of 1938, Beck must have believed that Hitler could be made to see the light. In one famous paper written at the time, he informed officers of the limits to their oath of obedience, when their consciences and responsibility would not allow them to carry out orders. Beck feared the growth of the paramilitary elements in the Third Reich and called for a new program “for the Führer, against war, free expression, and end of secret police practices, the return of law to the Reich, the halving of all levies, the end of palace building, the construction of homes for the people and Prussian cleanliness and simplicity.”

Another who joined the ranks of the opposition was president of the Reichsbank Hjalmar Schacht, encouraged by his wounded vanity as his importance declined in the Third Reich. Schacht could see better than anyone that autarky was leading the German boat onto the rocks. The country was pathetically short of foreign currency, which merely encouraged the gangsterlike Göring to steal it from the enemies of the regime: the Jews. Schacht’s impatience can’t have been helped by the Anschluss, which had required him to rescue his sister and her non-Aryan husband, then ferry them to Holland together with their money.

Some of the opponents of the regime were monarchists, which did not go down well in Britain, where some felt they should have finished the First World War by hanging the kaiser. One was Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, a Pomeranian squire and a member of the right-wing DNVP. He was connected to the plotters in the Abwehr through his brother-in-law, Ulrich von der Osten. In March he approached the British journalist Ian Colvin in the Casino Club in Berlin’s Bendlerstrasse and revealed details of Hitler’s aggressive program. The message from the opposition was always the same: that Hitler needed a firm approach that was the very reverse of the policy of appeasement pursued by the British government. Colvin took the message to Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the chargé d’affaires at the British embassy. By the time Kleist set out for London in August, his credentials had been properly screened on both sides of the North Sea.

HITLER HAD made it plain from the start: The Jews had to go. Göring had added that they should leave their
Gerstl
behind. There were a dozen or so methods of transferring money abroad, but in almost every case the sums involved were pitifully small. Any emigrant who had satisfied all the requirements could leave with 10 RM, or 20 schillings, or double that amount if going to a country with no common border with Germany. They could also bring 1,000 RM worth of goods. Personal belongings could also be removed, providing the emigrant had submitted a list for approval. Jewels generally had to be smuggled, as the state was particularly interested in impounding them.

One-way tickets could be paid for in Reichs marks. Traveling, for example, to South America would require a huge sum. Until 1938 there had been Altreu (Allgemeine Treuhandstelle für die Jüdische Auswanderung, the General Trust for Jewish Emigration), which had permitted Jews to transfer anything up to 50,000 RM to Palestine. This had been created to encourage trade between the two countries, much like the Ha’avara Agreement. The latter allowed for a complicated system of exchange whereby the emigrant paid his money into a closed account in RM and received it in sterling once he had landed in Palestine. It amounted to a favored trading status for Germany in the Mandate, an extraordinary situation in the circumstances and one that allowed German Jews numerous commodities from the old country.

Jews with foreign nationality could sell interests in a foreign company. Money that was not exported by one of these methods had to be paid into a closed account that could not be touched, which was later raided by the Ministry of Finance. Smuggling was a possibility, but German currency was virtually worthless on foreign exchanges. There were various schemes whereby the money could be given to a poor Jew and recouped from a rich friend or relative at the other end.

On March 26, the IKG in Vienna was dissolved, together with all the other organs of the Jewish congregation, greatly adding to the panic among the Jews “who were besieging the various foreign consulates in an effort to get out of the country.”

The process was Ulyssean. The first paper required was the
Steuerunbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung
(certificate of fiscal harmlessness), proving that all taxes were paid. The process of obtaining it was as long and clumsy as the word itself. It involved visits to and payments to the
Bezirkshauptmannschaft
, the directorate of the applicant’s district, where the
Kleiner Meldenachweis
—a certificate of domicile—was to be obtained. The next stop was the Magistratsabteilung, the district commissioner’s department in the town hall; this was followed by the Accountancy Department or the central tax office and the tax office of the district where the applicant lived. If the forms had been filled in properly and the right sums paid, the applicant received his
Steuerunbedenklichkeitsbescheinigung
and could proceed to stage two.

That is, if he had enough money to pay for emigration tax or could raise it by selling off his goods. Jewish assets were technically worthless, and many people were reduced to borrowing money to finance their departure, when a few weeks before they had figured among the richest inhabitants of the city.

Stage two consisted of a visit to the Devisenstelle, where the Jew’s assets were released and the department granted certificates of good conduct. The long lines outside both offices provided a means of making a little money for both the Nazis and unscrupulous Jews. The corruption did not abate. In December, Gertrude Löwenhek complained that she had spent six nights camping outside the British consulate in the Wallnerstrasse while Nazis with swastika armbands took 100 RM bribes to issue numbered passes.

Doing a little business on the side was not restricted to the men loitering around the consulates. Certain Jews styled themselves documentation experts: They stood outside offices and offered to obtain papers for individuals for a fee. “They knew every back door. It was the poor Jews who queued for hours outside the front doors.” Those waiting in the lines were sitting ducks. They could be picked out and sent off to clean up a barracks by SA men or Hitler Youth boys. When they reached the front of the line, they were told the form was incorrectly filled in and that they had to do it all again.

Stage three was the passport itself from the emigration office. The applicant first went to the police station of his district, where he had to answer questions as to the nature of the passport: new, for all lands, a passe-partout, an extension of an existing document. Then the applicant went off to the emigration office in the Herrengasse and then to the Passamt in the Wehrgasse, where the appropriate visas had to be obtained.

The passport office in the Wehrgasse in the fifth district was one of the most feared stations of abuse and humiliation. One witness recounted, “How frightful this Wehrgasse was! A much too narrow room in an old Viennese house, a narrow suburban street, in which thousands pushed, shoved, sweated and cursed.” On average people waited for a day and a half before receiving their papers.

The applicant still needed money. “The only foreign exchange he can obtain is that put at the disposal of the community by outside refugee organisations, which is completely reserved for the purpose. In return for his last Marks he obtains the necessary dollars or pounds: if he has none, he receives an advance from the community.”

For many countries a certificate of moral probity was required as well as proof of residence. For the moral certificate two witnesses were necessary. Beginning on July 23 a new ordeal was established: The applicant had to provide a photograph with an exposed left ear and register his or her fingerprints. Once the
Ausreisebewilligung
was granted, the applicant had to promise never to darken Austria’s doors again.

It would be hard to argue that there was no element of sadism in the long-drawn-out business of obtaining the relevant papers to leave, even if Eichmann could justify it by saying that it ensured that the Jews left their money behind. The crucial interrogations of would-be immigrants took place in the Palais Rothschild in the Prinz-Eugenstrasse. Lines gathered several hundred meters away on the Schwarzenberg Platz at nightfall in order to make sure of being seen the following day. There were two lines: one for “normal” Jews and the other for those who had been bought out of Dachau and who were recognizable by their shaven heads. The
Dachauer
took precedence.

By the end of September Eichmann could boast that he had rid Austria of 50,000 Jews. It was much tougher for Austrians to find a safe haven than it had been for the Germans after 1933. Visas had been abolished for Germans and Austrians in 1927, but the Home Office in London changed the rules in response to the Anschluss, reinstating the restrictions. The new rules came into force on May 21. The British government did not want to see the country flooded with poor Central European Jews, and it knew that once they were in, it would prove difficult to send them back. There was even a suggestion that MI5 had warned the government that the whole thing was a Nazi plot to flood Britain with Jews and create a “Jewish problem” in the United Kingdom.

At first discretionary powers were left with the passport control officers, who were often more sympathetic to the cases before them than the government would have been. The argument behind this was that they had the ability to find out more about individual cases than an immigration officer at the ports—and by then it would be too late. It also shifted the onus of guilt from the Home Office to the Passport Control Office (PCO), which was nominally under the control of the Foreign Office.

Later the Home Office changed its mind—perhaps because too many Jews were being let in. The Passport Control Office had to forward all applications to the Home Office for its approval. The Home Office clearly did not trust the PCO. There were accusations of favoritism, and the consul-general in Vienna, St. Clair Gainer, admitted that all his officials seemed to have some “pet Jew” they wanted to see admitted. In December the Home Office finally proposed that all applications be made in Britain, providing that the persons in question give the right assurances that they could maintain themselves. The distrust might have been caused by the occasionally pragmatic approach of MI6 and the PCO.

ADOLF EICHMANN was the model Nazi civil servant, “a totally obedient receiver of orders.” Hitler intimated the broad lines of policy; the Nazi satrap filled in the detail in such a way as to please his master. Austrian Jews were to be treated with a good deal more savagery than had been experienced in Germany up to then. Despite rough handling, however, Eichmann had yet to advocate the “final solution.” For the time being his policy was an economic solution: Jews would be fleeced first and then driven into exile.

Eichmann was creating the Viennese model for forcing Jews out, preferably to Palestine. His concern was how that could reasonably be funded. Rich Jews could get themselves out, but not the poor. The Ha’avara Agreement of August 1933 was defunct by the time of the Anschluss. Of the 170,000 Jews who left German lands between 1933 and 1939, 50,000 found their way to Palestine, taking their home comforts with them, including furniture, household equipment, paintings, and objets d’art.

At the beginning Eichmann wanted emigration to Palestine to be carried out according to the proper procedures. This was doomed to failure while Britain opposed Jewish emigration in large numbers. A Palestinian journalist called Mosche Krivoschein (code name Galili) had a plan to help Revisionist Jews get to Palestine. He had won over Dr. Kagan, the president of the Makkabi (Zionist sports clubs). Money would be found to get around the quotas imposed by the British. Galili had contacts with Greek shipowners who had formerly been involved in gunrunning during the Spanish Civil War. Now that it had become legal, there was no money to be made anymore, and they were looking for new business. They were prepared to transport Jews for a price, in small and not particularly seaworthy vessels.

Galili’s organization Af-Al-Pi (Despite Everything) brought together the services of the Viennese lawyer Willi Perl and the industrialist Hans Perutz together with an “extremist” called Paul Haller. They operated transports in 1937 and 1938, but the last to leave was April 25, 1938. Perl went to see Eichmann to suggest ways of shipping Jews to Palestine illegally. He drew attention to the risks involved, for the British were liable to compensate for illegal entries by docking their number from the number of legal entry visas. Eichmann was scandalized by the suggestion; he did not wish to create “centers of crime.” He was apparently so angry that he told Perl “I’ll put you up against a wall and shoot you!” Perl replied, “We need your cooperation for a more important matter.” With time Eichmann was convinced.

Perl did not abandon his project. After he was forced to give up his legal practice in the Stubenring, he dedicated himself to emigration. Together with Galili he went to Berlin to promote his ideas. It was a dangerous game, as he was incurring the wrath of numerous London-based Jewish organizations that were there to seek legal ways of increasing the number of people allowed into Palestine.

Another organization that grew up at the time was Mossad, or Mossad leAliyah Bet (the Institute for Immigration). As the Hebrew name implies, it was created to facilitate illegal entry into Palestine. In a report dated August 17, 1939, the Zionist Norman Bentwich, representing the Council for German Jewry, related an interview he had had with “Captain” Eichmann in Vienna. The British had formally ended Jewish emigration to Palestine, but Eichmann persisted: The Nazi authorities “systematically foster illegal transports to Palestine, and for this purpose do provide a certain amount of marks from the confiscated Jewish property.”

Eichmann’s plan was to drive out 7,000 to 8,000 Jews a month. That way he would have eliminated the Austrian Jews by the beginning of 1940. “They prefer a disorderly to a planned emigration, as a means of making trouble for Jews in other countries,” Bentwich noted when he attended the meeting with Dr. Löwenherz from the IKG. Eichmann claimed to be acting on orders from the “highest quarters.” He was prepared to allow that 20,000 to 25,000 Jews could remain in Austria. They were to be made up of old people “who could not be emigrated,” “pensioners of the government or the municipality,” and “very poor persons.” Bentwich was told that Eichmann was retraining the Jews for their new lives. Most of it was for menial work, an intentional humiliation: “There is a class, for example, for bar-mixers, and several for butlers, which are attended by lawyers, doctors and industrialists. The possibility of domestic service in England has been a Godsend. Thousands of children and adults are learning English somehow.”