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I am an Austrian refugee just 16 years of age, who has luckily managed for several months to escape with my life from that hell – and by hell I mean Vienna occupied by 15- to 25-year-old criminals.

I cannot describe here in a few short lines all the dreadful and horrible things that I experienced just five months ago. Even if I were to speak about it for years, it would be impossible to relate everything that I suffered personally.

I will try to report a little, however, of course only that which I personally felt physically or saw with my own eyes.

The days after the 13th March 1938:

At this time Nazis armed with revolvers and fixed bayonets often intruded into Jewish homes and businesses to loot them.

Jewish businesses were daubed with white or black paint and next to drawings which were supposed to show Jews one could read the following inscription on every Jewish business: JUD oder SAUJUD 1Note 1: JEW or JEWISH PIG;

some time later: BIN SCHON IN DACHAU 2Note 2: I'M IN DACHAU ALREADY etc.

Jewish businesses were placed under the management of Aryan commissioners if they had not been arisiert 3Note 3: aryanised away, which means they were robbed by Nazis.

Jewish lawyerswere deprivedof the right to practise their profession. 15,000 Jews were already out of work in April and being fed by the Israelitisch Kultusgemeinde 4Note 4: Jewish community.

Men and women were rounded up together at random on the streets or fetched from homes by the brown[-shirted] hordes for Reiben 5Note 5: washing. They had to wash off the labels of the old regime, at which they were laughed at and mistreated by the Nazis.

Sometimes the SA occupied Jewish homes in order to listen to Hitler's speeches on the radio.

On the streets elderly Jews not infrequently were made to perform military exercises or gymnastics.

Imprisonments begin:

If a Jew attempted to leave for abroad he was arrested, because he was presumed to be a Fluchtgefahr 6Note 6: escape risk.

On the other hand, if a Jew had not attempted to leave, then he wanted to remain in Germany and was arrested anyway!

Prominent Vienna Jews mostly came into Schutzhaft 7Note 7: protective custody.

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Life became insufferable and scores of Viennese made an end to their lives of their own free will at the moment of their arrest, though it often seemed that they had been shot by the Nazis who had forced their way into their homes. Thousands of large lorries were driven by young Nazis through the streets of Vienna shouting Juda verrecke 8Note 8: perish Judah. Nowhere was safe for life as a Jew any more, since even a five-year-old boy had a knife 20 cm long, with which he threatened Saujuden or was allowed to or should injure them.

I myself attended a Realgymnasium 9Note 9: secondary school where the majority of pupils were Aryan. After Hitler invaded, the AryanpupilsJewish ones so severely that the Nazi director of our establishment felt obliged to issue the following instruction: Aryanpupils in future will not be aggressive towards Jewish pupils in the school building, since the fate of these people is being determined outside the school.

I would like to point out that this directive naturally had not the slightest effect on the German-Aryan pupils equipped with revolvers, knives, boots, brown and white shirts: they continued to come to lessons in the same garb and clearly showed that the Nazis were there now.

After a while I had to attend a Jewish school, at which young, National Socialist professors were said to deliver lessons on all subjects. They did not do this, and contented themselves with coming to school in SS uniform and threatening the poor Jewish pupils.

Outside school one did not have to Reiben 10Note 10: wash any more. Homes were no longer occupied by Nazis who wanted to listen to the radio or loot valuables; no one was raided by the Gestapo in the home, and almost every Vienna Jew was arrested and dispatched to Dachau concentration camp. The period of mass arrests had begun...

If someone rang at the door of a Jewish home, one did not open it for fear that it would be the Gestapo. One dreaded going to the telephone, and one dared not speak in one’s own home, because a microphone could have been installed somewhere and a rash word meant arrest.

If two Jews walked together in the street then they were exposed to the danger of being arrested by the SA , and if they did not give the identical answer to the Nazis’ question on what they had been speaking about, then they would be arrested immediately.

During these months I spent more than one day unhappy, more than one night sleepless.

In Vienna every Jew aged over 18 years was threatened with unfounded arrest and the SPECTRE OF DACHAU!

On some days, orders came from Herr [Josef] Bürckel, and then, for example, 2,000 or another time again 800 Jews were arrested.

Neither my father nor my uncle avoided unfounded arrest.

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In the same way as I stood in front of the prison for endless days and nights crying and confused, so did many children whose fathers, and many, many women, whose husbands or sons had been arrested without reason.

Mostly all attempts for release were in vain, and after two days the transport went to Dachau.

Jews were rounded up in the streets, from homes , from businesses and coffeehouses, no longer for Reiben but for Freifahrt nach Dachau 11Note 11: free travel to Dachau, as the noble Nazis described it.

There is no Jewish family in Vienna who is not affected by this insufferable misfortune; at least one man from every family is in Schutzhaft 12Note 12: protective custody and whilst he is being tortured and martyred in Dachau or Buchenwald, his relatives in Vienna are close to despair.

People place such suffering upon people!

Whilst I am writing this and no longer suffer, things are even worse for the poor Jews in Vienna than at the time when I was still there. Evidence should be the lines written to me by a lady who has also escaped that hell for some time, and what was reported to me by a friend who is already in a foreign country.

The lady in question writes:

I cannot describe to you what we have been part of, because a book would not suffice to record everything that we had to experience and suffer. I lived with my relative Dr. N. since 1st November. On the Thursday in question there were house searches for every Jew, and then we were all locked up, even the child. The 10 mark note that my cousin had lent me was taken from me though that was everything I possessed, and I had to sign that I had all my possessions. In Aachen I was stripped bare, and then a train was going to Brussels, and I took this train, to be able at last to get out of the hell.

A friend reports:

Firstly, I must apologise for my long silence. So much has happened since I last wrote to you that I could neither reply to any letters nor pay any visits, because the events left me not a minute free. We, i.e. my family, had to survive imprisonment and a house search...

After endless queuing and much running about we finally succeeded in obtaining a [tax certificate] and thus we have fortunately arrived in X...

You can hardly imagine what has played out in Germany since the assassination of Ambassador vom Rath.

That we were not arrested or looted on that black Thursday is only attributable to the exemplary and honourable behaviour of our Blockleiter 13Note 13: block leader.

In total, roughly 2,500 male youths of our age (18 years!) were sent to Dachau...

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It is so dreadful that one cannot write about what I alone have seen.

One cannot really celebrate one’s freedom when one thinks of the lot of those who are left behind in that hell!

Report of a 16-year-old male youth from Vienna, forwarded by Frau Dora Prywes, Antwerp, c/o Menko Max Hirsch.