Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives
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Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives

Letters from Vienna

Edith Kurzweil

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Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives

Letters from Vienna

Edith Kurzweil

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About This Book

Although the period leading up to the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews has been well recorded, few sources convey the incremental effect of specific decrees aimed to dehumanize the Jews who were caught in Hitler's net, and how their everyday lives were transformed. These letters, written by Malvina Fischer to her daughter Mimi Weisz, have been translated and edited by her granddaughter Edith Kurzweil. They convey with vivid immediacy the fears and premonitions, the ghettoization and escape attempts that were the common experience of Viennese and German Jews in the years preceding the implementation of the "Final Solution."In the first section of the volume, Kurzweil establishes the personal and political contexts of the letters (written between April 6, 1940 and December 1941, when Malvina Fischer and her family were deported) and links them to the then emerging "Jewish laws." The second section contains the letters themselves and documents the throttling grip in which the authorities held every Viennese Jew who had not managed to escape. The third section consists of translations of official summaries of the relevant laws, ordinances, and edicts--many of them marked "secret"--which inexorably determined that Kurzweil's family become part of the "final solution." From these letters and documents we become aware, also, of the profusion of legal entities dealing with Jews, the rivalries among them, and the free-floating dimensions of victims' fear and dread.Because the letters are full of allusions rather than straightforward information, and characterized by self-censorship, Edith Kurzweil has annotated them and inserted the relevant numbers of the specific laws as these were being applied.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351322669
Edition
1

1

Introduction: A Viennese Jewish Family under Nazi Law—Before Being Deported

A few months after my father died, in November 1993, my then ninety-two-year-old mother handed me a tattered, brown manila envelope stuffed with barely legible letters, on thin airmail paper. The letters were mostly from her mother, Malvine Fischer. Even now, she didn’t want to open this envelope, trying not to open old wounds. “You are the only person I know who is interested in that past,” she said almost apologetically, as she handed me this packet. “I have never reread these letters. And I don’t want to upset myself by thinking, once again, of what happened to my family.” Still, she went on to speculate, as she had so many times over the years, what steps she could have taken to save her relatives from being murdered, and how her mother’s presence, all by itself, might have rendered my family’s life in America more harmonious.
While deciphering my grandmother’s even, gothic penmanship, she once more came alive for me. I recalled her determined stride, the twinkle in her eyes when she conspired with me to circumvent my mother’s tendency to be inordinately stern, and her trust in me. Unlike my mother, she had not fallen for my brother’s fibs, although like everyone else she had gloried in the good looks and charm of her only male grandchild. And she had bragged to everyone who would listen about my perfect report cards, or my placing second at a recent children’s swimming competition. No one ever again, I now realized, ever would praise me quite so unreservedly, or exaggerate my accomplishments. But before reading these letters, I had not known for sure that my mother had been the favorite among her mother’s four children, nor that the mother-daughter bond was so very strong. Thus I underestimated the extent to which my mother actually suffered after the separation from her mother. The quality of these close ties emerges not only from the tone of the correspondence below, and from the messages that are being conveyed, but led me to recall many intimate scenes during my childhood, when my mother relied on her mother’s help and advice.
Upon translating and decoding some of these shriveled transparent pages, it struck me that in spite of all the letters and memoirs that have been published, of the histories and theses, the theoretical and scholarly debates, the transcripts of trials and testimonies, the confessions and denials by perpetrators, the thoughtful exhibitions in Holocaust museums, and the recapitulations of, and annotations to, the laws by the National Socialist state, no one really has documented the incremental effect of specific decrees aimed to dehumanize the Jews who remained in the Nazis’ realm; and how their every day lives were being transformed and traumatized.
Ordinarily, the letters between a mother and her daughter about their humdrum existence would not merit much attention. But because the letters were written between April 6, 1940 and November 19, 1941, their details deserve being put into context, since such authentic personal experiences in Nazi-dominated Vienna never directly have been linked to the incremental “Jewish laws” that aimed to destroy the country’s Jewish population. Although parts of the letters, which are reproduced in the second section of this book, were missing, and some were undated, they provide a picture of the increasingly throttling grip in which the Nazi authorities held every Viennese Jew who had not yet managed to escape.
By reading my grandmother’s communications, and those written by one or another of my relatives, in tandem with the many ordinances and edicts, we can follow, step by step, the inexorable path that led to their deportation, that made them part of the “final solution.” As we will see, it is not at all clear to what extent the victims were informed of specific laws, or what motivated the local commanders and their deputies to post some of them while keeping others secret. Inevitably, this policy exacerbated the unavoidable confusion between facts and rumors. The profusion of legal entities dealing with Jews, and the rivalries among them, only added to the free-floating dimensions of the victims’ fear and dread, and to the apprehensions caused by what the few persons who had been released from Nazi detention had conveyed. Finally, my family’s letters testify, also, that even as Jews began to know that they might be “relocated to Poland,” they did not foresee that they would be slaughtered.
While reading this correspondence I again recalled that not a single piece of mail was forwarded without having been carefully examined by a censor, whose identification number and location was pencilled in at the top right hand corner of each sheet; and that every envelope had been slit open, and resealed with a wide, white tape, before being stamped one or more times with the official seal of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Of course, we knew that all our mail to Vienna was examined as well before being delivered. Consequently, allusion took the place of information, and self-censor-ship was necessary for survival.
The third part of this book consists of summaries of laws pertaining to my families. (I have left out those affecting “mixed marriages,” the offspring of such unions, and those aimed at Aryans having contact with Jews.) We know from thousands of accounts that these laws served to dehumanize the victims while justifying the perpetrators. Still, upon reading the summaries of over 2,000 of these edicts, we cannot escape concluding that the special laws for Jews in the National-Socialist state, which were passed from the day Hitler took over in 1933 to the end of the war in 1945, amounted to much more than the sum of their parts.
After many tribulations and near misses, my mother left Vienna for Genoa on April 6, 1940 in order to immigrate to the United States. By then, approximately three quarters of the “Jewish Laws” were in place, and our former lives had been destroyed: my father, after having been arrested immediately after the Anschluss, at the instigation of a competitor, was forced to “sell” his marble enterprise and, fortunately, had been able to leave for Paris; already before then my mother’s brother Albin with his wife and children had immigrated to Shanghai; we had had to give up our luxurious apartment on the Wiedner Hauptstrasse. On December 31. 1938, we had had to move into my uncle Poldi’s and his wife Lia’s apartment in my father’s parents’ apartment building on the Gaudenzdorfergürtel. From there, my brother and I were sent with a children’s transport to Belgium on February 9, 1939. Subsequently, my mother had had to install herself in the maid’s room of her own parents’ apartment in the Grosse Schiffgasse. Roundups of Jews had become common place by then, and harassing them had turned into a sport. Jews already could not enter stores except during limited hours, had special, arbitrary taxes imposed, even on property they no longer owned. But at that time, my father’s formerly wealthy family still was thought to be financially safe, although my mother’s fairly well-off parents already had to watch their expenditures. Neither of them expected that within a year they would be strapped for the necessary money to buy food.
By April 6, 1940, Germany was at war with France and England but still was the ally of the Soviet Union, and they had overrun and divided up Poland. My father was detained in a camp for enemy aliens, first in Lisieux and then in Deauville, and the only direct information my parents received of each other was through me. It was under these circumstances that, immediately after her departure, my grandmother began to write to her beloved Mimerl, as she kept repeating, to be close to her. They were devastated at having to be separated, worried about the hardships they were forced to endure on both sides of the Atlantic, and were aching to be reunited. Nevertheless, no one as yet imagined that even though they were obeying the Gestapo’s orders they would be in direct physical danger.
However, three days after my mother’s departure Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, and one day after that it was decreed that Jews in concentration camps no longer were to be released (85). Three days later, while my mother still was in Italy, all Jews’ private health insurance policies were cancelled (86). And, in addition to conveying her anxiety about my mother’s impending trip, my grandmother writes on April 12 that they received a much welcomed food package from a relative in Slovakia; she is concerned about the whereabouts of my father (Ernst), and about news from “the children.” On April 16 she hopes that “with God’s help you have started your voyage today.” (Italy declared war that day, and my mother did get to leave.) From here on, news about relatives and friends abound, some in code, which to the casual reader might seem insipid, but in fact are indicative of specific hardships and deprivations they are afraid to state explicitly. Therefore, such reports as “we have no news from the children and in view of most recent events are worried about when they will be able to leave,” must be read in relation to the invasion of Belgium.
Overall, the propaganda by the Nazi leadership kept blaming the Jews for every mishap related to the war, and for the resulting adversities Germans eventually would have to suffer. But even while the Germans still were victorious, my relatives’ repeated hopes for the end of the hostilities referred not only to that, but also to the belief and desire that the Allies would win in the near future, and thereby would bring Hitler’s rule to a quick close. This attitude is spelled out most explicitly in my father’s first letter to my mother in New York, which he wrote about a month before his departure from France, on April 15, 1940. In that letter he suggests that she and his brother (and partner), Felix, do nothing about various business matters, in order to be in the driver’s seat after the—soon to be ended—war.
In any event, all such statements had to be avoided when corresponding with Vienna. Writing to my mother about the gracious letter I sent to her from Brussels, and my many questions, my grandmother states: “What can I say about us? I hope you’ll be able to tell her more;” she admonishes her daughter not to “write about Uncle Toni’s ailment;” and complains about unreliable mail. But this is as close as she comes to alluding to what ails them on April 22, 1940. A week later, she describes the slow pace at which American visas are being issued; the fear that my mother’s sister, Ilka, might be expelled because due to her (long-dissolved) marriage to a Slovak citizen she had lost her Austrian citizenship; and her relief when finding out that the police only wanted her to renew her own and her daughter, Blanka’s, passports. This letter details as well her disappointment at not having heard from Viki, my mother’s youngest brother in Rio de Janeiro; she refers to her brother-in-law’s arrest as a trip. Here, we have the first indication, also, that my two sets of grandparents who never had gotten along, now would become close, and would keep in touch with each other. However, my grandmother does not seem to be cognizant of the most recent (and somewhat contradictory) law (89) ordaining Jewish immigration to be intensified; keeping able-bodied Jews from leaving for (enemy) European countries; discouraging departure for Palestine; and forbidding the release of Jews born in Poland from concentration camps.
My grandmother’s letter of May 10, 1940 mentions that she had heard from me about my mother’s arrival in New York, and is fearful that “today’s events will probably delay their departure.” (That morning the Germans had begun the invasion of Holland and Belgium on their way to France, and my grandmother did not yet know that my brother and I had received our American visas on May 6.) When she asks, “What can I write about us,” does she refer to the edict (90) that restricts all Jews to their apartments between 8:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. the following morning? Does she try to convey this by saying that their days are dismal, and by reporting about the hindrances and obstacles facing persons whose plans to leave Vienna kept being thwarted? Whereas she soon would have to comply with filing yet other forms about their property (91) (93), she could not yet know that the deportation of some Jews to Poland was being prepared (92). Nor could she be aware that a secret order that cleared the way for deploying Jews as forced laborers in agriculture–“to prepare them for a profession after immigration” (136) - was in the offing. Then and later, my grandmother was overjoyed that my mother had safely landed in New York, was full of encouragement about her imminent success in America, but was afraid for Ernst and the children (we had been able to leave Belgium for unoccupied France with the other ninety-eight “orphans” but had not yet been able to write).
At the beginning of this correspondence, my grandmother reports about the tense family dynamics among my father’s relatives, the fiasco at being ordered to take in another lodger, the travel plans of relatives and friends and their congratulations to my grandfather on his birthday (May 24th); and she sends New York addresses to her Mimerl of persons who might be helpful. Now, for the first time, she mentions “hats,” the word she and my mother had agreed upon that was to refer to money. The chatty letter she composes two days later, in which she continues to go into the details of so many peoples’ daily problems, not only highlights my grandmother’s mothering qualities but her enormous energy and managerial abilities. (Before the Anschluss, she oversaw a large household, welcomed whoever wanted to join the family for a meal, and kept the books for my grandfather’s carpentry enterprise. Their loyal workers had insisted on thwarting the Nazis by buying the shop, in part, on credit.) Questions of health, of scarcity of provisions, and of packages from relatives in Slovakia that help augmenting their meager diet become central. And so do reports of deaths; and repetitions about the laying of cards as indicators of what the future might bring.
Undoubtedly, some of my grandmother’s friends departures were delayed due to the new and complex requirements related to the “certificate of clearance from tax liability” (96) and the “certificate of good conduct” (98). In the following two letters, home sickness for her beloved daughter, scuttlebutt and information about her son Albin’s and his family’s doings in Shanghai, appear next to the concern for my brother and me—which cements a friendship with a woman who, too, is apprehensive about the fate of a child caught in the shuffle of the advancing German armies. Soon, they will write to the Red Cross in Geneva, “since we aren’t allowed to write to Belgium directly.” From these letters it is unclear whether my grandmother knows that “as a result of the war [Jews] cannot immigrate (103), or that the official Jewish organizations (Kultusgemeinden) no longer are to be protected by security (101). Increasingly, we read about people looking for apartments. But the letter of June 14 is upbeat because after nearly two and a half years, my parents have been rejoined.
Now, in addition to concerns, advice and hopes, a subtle undertone creeps in, alluding to my father’s former selfish life style, his reluctance to give up his personal pleasures, and my grandmother’s overarching desire that everything, especially the marriage, will turn out well. Moreover, every letter also deals with the household goods that were to be aboard my mother’s ocean liner but were kept in Genoa instead. In fact, my grandfather is getting the run-around, keeps going to the shipping agent, talks to his representative, and visits my paternal grandfather (Josef Weisz) to consult with him about what to do. By July 16, the “determinations” about such property are being addressed legally (114). None of my grandparents apparently were aware of that law, as they kept on trying, though gradually to a lesser degree, to have these crates forwarded to New York. (While my mother still was in Vienna, she had had some of our furniture packed in a lift van which she ultimately was not allowed to take along.) Eventually, this matter kept all my grandparents busy, and reading the details of their efforts and worries about these goods in themselves are instructive. My grandmother’s preoccupations about life without bed linen, and her questions about whether my father could bring his clothes are those of a former era. While leafing through her letters, I realized for the first time that the acquisition of household effects had meant a great deal to her generation; that these had been so much more expensive and hard to come by than now, and represented stability. As a child I never had been aware of these concerns, or had realized that, in fact, my grandparents had been emigrants (from Slovakia) to Vienna at the turn of the century. Once more, my grandmother hopes for the end of the hostilities, and, I assume, wants my parents to recall that whenever shipments will get through, the rough times will be over. And she does not mention their own and much more serious deprivations, except by stating that since they are old and don’t have much longer to live they must carry their lot. (She was sixty-one.)
On June 24, my grandmother thinks she might not survive the long wait ahead to see her Mimi. As an aside, she mentions that she already sold their dining room furniture, that they had gone to yet another funeral, and that one after another of her friends is upset about having had to postpone their departure. By July 1, her mood improves upon finding out that my brother and I safely are in the unoccupied zone of France, that my parents finally are living together—in an apartment they sublet “even if only for three months”—and that both Ilka and Blanka are learning English. All in all, my grandmother gets her satisfactions by focusing on her children’s lives abroad. She wants to know everything they do and think, and especially how they are going about establishing themselves in their new, to her outlandish, worlds. Apparently, all of the eighteen “regulars” are reading Mimi’s letters every Sunday afternoon and, in turn, my grandmother relays what news they brought on these visits. Most of the letters have greetings from my grandfather, and about half of them from Ilka and Blanka. But the nitty-gritty information comes from my grandmother.
Neither on July 5, nor later on, does she let us know that the day before Jews in Berlin, and most likely in Vienna, were being restrained from marketing except between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon (109). But she mentions that her overwhelming need to be with Mimi means she must leave Vienna in a hurry. She lets on that the first transport to America via Siberia and Japan would be leaving soon, and that she hopes that when their time to cross the ocean had arrived, it would be by a more direct route. When she goes on to state that my grandfather cannot afford the girdle he needs to alleviate his back pain, and that he is being observed in the clinic of the Rothschild hospital, I cannot but recall their former material well-being, and to reflect on how deeply the Nazi ideology had penetrated into the most intimate realms of existence. Through my grandmother’s comments on the pictures of the Shanghai contingent, former family misunderstandings again come to the surface; and this confirms what as a child I only sensed, that my grandmother preferred Mimi’s children to those of her other progeny.
Although my grandmother already makes a point of writing that she went to the Billitzers to call my fathers’ parents (thanks to their Aryan son-in-law they have a phone) she never mentions that as of July 19 Jews no longer are entitled to have telephones (115) (117). Nor does she inform us of the recent laws tightening currency control (99) (104) (119) (120). These decrees did not affect her directly, but my grandfather Weisz, though no longer in touch with his foreign enterprises, was subject to suspicion of still being connected. That Jews could not receive tax reductions on real estate (121) promptly had its impact on my paternal grandparents: my uncle Poldi’s Aryan wife, Lia, blackmailed them into taking out a large mortgage–the money she received was to keep her from divorcing Poldi and thus take away his (partial) protection. Nevertheless, she soon thereafter divorced him.
That summer, my grandmother for the most part is preoccupied with the whereabouts of me and my brother. She imagines me (Ditta or Ditterl) as pretty, competent and fetching, able to take hard times in my stride, and my brother (Hansl or Hanserl) as more homesick; and she worries about the safety of our voyage. (The Atlantic Ocean was mined.) Indeed, her intuition was more or less correct on all counts. I was intent on acting the grownup and leaving no stone unturned to get us out of Europe. While pestering the various consulates and the prefecture in Toulouse to allow us to leave, I didn’t have time to be homesick–except in my dreams. Still my grandmother also writes about the friends who have lost their apartments and are moving to rooms in their vicinity; about exchanging one of her lodgers for another one who, however, will pay less; and about the fact that the Kultusgemeinde is searching for rooms to requisition.
Just as in the past, her family’s birthdays are my grandmother’s holidays. She celebrated mine (June 3) without knowing where I was, is congratulating my mother on hers (August 12), and soon wonders where Hansl (September 13) will spend his. But news about persons who cannot depart, about others who have died, and yet others who were detained, predominate, although she reports about relatives and other people to whom she had been a friend in need and who now send food packages, write and visit. Every letter gives updates on Matilde, my grandfather’s much younger sister, whose son, Fritz (a first-year law student who already was in Chicago), sent her an affidavit which appears to get her ever closer to America, but won’t get her there even after she finally has her visa—first due to lack of space on the few available boats, and then because America was in the war. Many letters mention the Aryan Poldi she has not yet seen: she isn’t supposed to be in contact with Jews, but has some of my mother’s jewelry (“hats”) she eventually will convert to cash.
I was too young to realize then what it must have meant for my parents themselves to sink from their upper-middle class life into the working class. Did my grandmother understand, when she comments on what nerve my mother had to go into dress making, and goes on to assum...

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