ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author details an autobiographical memoir of his childhood. Long before 1938, vicious anti-Semitism filled Austrian political, social and economic life. After 1936 there was creeping Nazification of Austria. The Nazi party, outlawed in 1934, gradually came out into the open and gained power, particularly in the provinces where Schuschnigg’s clerical-fascist government lost influence. The Austrians, it turned out, were far worse than the German Nazis. Within days of the Anschluss, there were many outrages, especially in the second district of Vienna – the Leopoldstadt – where masses of Jews lived. Each day more Jews were unemployed and without means. The author saw queues of thousands waiting desperately outside foreign embassies and consulates for visas to escape Austria. Remarkably, during those nine months the author spent in Nazified Vienna, he was not afraid to walk in his neighborhood. He continued to go to school in the Stauding-ergasse, crossing the Friedensbrucke twice a day.
