1938 (37 page)

Collard performed his last nineteen baptisms on September 15, before returning to Cologne. Following his departure there were developments in Britain. Appeasement was in the air. An initiative from Sir Wyndham Deedes led to the creation of a Christian Council to assist Jews from Germany and Austria. The new body joined the others in Bloomsbury House, which had campaigned for non-Aryan Christians, children, and students, as well as the Quakers’ own operation. It would put pressure on the Dominions to accept the Jews. Collard’s departure came at a time when the first large-scale releases were being made from Dachau. Some were not so lucky. Bruno Heilig was transferred to Buchenwald on the 22nd. If anything, the camp was even grimmer, although one of the capos turned out to be a relatively sympathetic Prussian Junker, whose grandmother was a Jew.

The Jews showed little sympathy for the plight of the Czechs. President Beneš created the problem for himself by his attempts to prevent a Habsburg restoration in 1934 and 1935. “Better Hitler than Habsburg,” he is supposed to have said. Weisl predicted that 6 million Jewish lives would now be lost between the Rhine and the Dnjester.

Nazi methods in Austria were not always crowned with success. In Mistelbach near the Czech border, the Jews were refusing to sell out. The Gestapo suggested they should be pushed across the frontier, as their closeness to Czechoslovakia caused a danger of Communist infiltration! The huge taxes levied on Jews leaving the country were also a disincentive. Eichmann was up against Göring. The latter wanted to fill the coffers of the state at the expense of the Jews, while Eichmann sought the fastest emigration possible. The number of Jews marooned in a hostile Central Europe was causing alarm in Jewish circles. There were 20,000 in the Sudetenland, which would soon be prey to Hitler’s racial policies; a further 385,000 were in rump Czechoslovakia, which was about to pass racial laws of its own; there were 410,000 in Hungary, which had already promulgated racial laws, and 78,000 in Yugoslavia, where the government had decreed measures against the Jews. Romania had 800,000, with 50,000 Christian converts. Poland had another 3.2 million. If you included 170,000 in Austria and 350,000 remaining in Germany, that made a European total of 4.1 million, not including Russia. Latvia was now the sole European country that remained open to Jews.

In the autumn of 1938 there were an estimated 200 Austrian Jews stranded in Yugoslavia. At the beginning of October, however, the Yugoslav government finally ruled that they intended to expel all foreign Jews in three months. The Dutch, too, were showing frustration at the number of illegal immigrants, and on September 20 the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
reported that 44 Austrian Jews had been sent home from Rotterdam. The British were flexing their muscles again over Palestine. Cyprus, with its proximity to the Mandate territory, was an obvious magnet. The numbers of Jews landing was causing concern, with 30 to 40 fresh refugees arriving every week. On September 21 it was reported that an 800-man transport from Vienna had been sent back. Weisl had promises of £1,000 to grease palms, but he needed twice that. In the wake of Evian he noted that Nicaragua was prepared to take in 3,000 Jews, but they had to hand over $100 on landing.

The news from Vienna was not all doom and gloom. There was a small sprinkling of that frivolity for which the city is famous. While the leaders of the Western world met to assign Hitler the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, a court convened in the former Austrian capital to decide who possessed the right to sell the “original” Sachertorte: Sacher’s Hotel or the café Demel. The court ruled in Sacher’s favor; the cake labeled the “original” had to come from their kitchens.

T
he German army officially took control of the Czech borderlands on October 1. The Poles wasted no time, occupying Teschen and Freistadt the following day. In Germany’s new
Gaue
the Jews were now at great risk. There were 27,000 Jews and non-Aryan Christians in the Sudetenland. In the summer there had been antisemitic riots in Eger, Asch, and Karlsbad, and Jewish shops had been ransacked. Famous spas like Carlsbad and Marienbad had been immensely popular with rich Jews.
Der Stürmer
reckoned that 80 percent of Carlsbad’s customers were Jewish, noting maliciously that although Jews had lost the choice to regain their health at Carlsbad, they could keep fit by running. The doctors who treated them were also likely to be Jews. There were other powerful Jewish clans in the region; the hop merchants of Saaz, for example, were largely Jewish. The message was clear, and thousands fled.

Although the Munich Agreement had laid down a provision for citizens to “opt” for Germany or Czechoslovakia, the Czechs refused protection to Jews who feared for their safety under the Nazis and forcibly returned as many as they could find to the German occupied areas. Many eluded them. By May 1939, only a tenth of that number remained in the new German
Gaue
. It was not only the Jews the Czechs were reluctant to accept; there were thousands of ethnic German Social Democrats too. The Nazis said they had no right to opt for Czechoslovakia. There were also 5,000 to 6,000 Germans who had taken refuge in Prague and other parts of Czechoslovakia after Hitler’s assumption of power. There was discrimination against Sudeten Jews, who were denied access to the funds they had been able to bring out, and the others who had crossed the demarcation lines penniless. The British donated £10 million to help alleviate the situation. This failed to prevent the Czechs from putting pressure on a quarter of a million Jews in the country to emigrate. Sopade, the organization of German Socialists in exile, also decided it was prudent to run. They set up their new home in Paris.

The new Czech government under President Emil Hàcha sought a rapprochement with Germany and aligned its policies accordingly. The French were to end their alliance with the country—which had done the Czechs little good—and the Czechs themselves decided to abandon their flirtation with the Soviet Union. German-style restrictions on the movement and employment of Jews were also introduced. On October 11, Mastny assured Göring that the Czechs would “seriously tackle the Jewish problem.” To some extent the attitude of the new Czech “Second Republic” was dictated by weakness. Stripped of its fortifications, it now had no means of holding the Germans back. As it was, the settlement had been clumsy: 478,589 ethnic Germans remained in rump Czechoslovakia, while 676,478 Czechs were now living in Germany. Those half million Germans were hardly popular, either. Hitler was still straining at the leash. As he told Goebbels on the evening of the 2nd, it was his unshakable decision to smash Czecho. “And he will make it happen too: this dead, amorphous, artificial state must go.”

Helmuth Groscurth accompanied Admiral Canaris on his tour of inspection of the new German
Gaue
. Canaris was anxious to avoid the Gestapo, who had made as many as two hundred arrests by the 3rd of the month. He did not wish to be seen shaking either Himmler or Heydrich’s hands. In the regular army there was resentment against the SS too. General Bock complained about Heydrich, but Groscurth noted that they confined themselves to grumbling: “No general dares show this criminal the door.” Groscurth nonetheless noted the excitement of the Sudetenländer: “There is a marked contrast with Austria. The people there were more or less drunk, here, however, you note a real liberation and a sigh of relief from people who have been freed of a heavy load.”

HITLER WENT on a tour of the Czech defenses on the 3rd and 4th. SS bands played his favorite “Badenweiler March.” He recognized Canaris and stopped his car to greet him. In his cavalcade of thirty-odd cars there were just three Wehrmacht men. The rest were SS or Sudetenländer. The RAM was with him, in the grey diplomatic uniform with “lots of gold.” Groscurth discovered a boorish Reichenau knocking back
Sekt
, infatuated with Hitler. He repeated some of his hero’s remarks on Chamberlain and Daladier. The latter he called a “master baker.” Groscurth remarked that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. General Rundstedt had a different view: “Canaris, how long do we have to put up with this foolish performance?”

Groscurth was sent on a second tour of duty, this time on Henlein’s staff. Contrary to the rumors of his homosexuality running riot in the SS, the Sudeten leader revealed himself as a family man with a fondness for burgundy. He had set up his HQ in a deserted Jewish villa. While Groscurth explored the new
Gaue
, he noted the misery of the 40,000 or so Czech coal miners around Dux and Brux, who had now become German citizens. In a fish factory he was greeted with shouts of “
Heil Hitler!
” by the 500 chiefly women staff but was told a few days before they would have cried “
Heil Moskau!
”

Hitler observed that the Czech fortresses were built in the same style as France’s Maginot Line. He then turned them over to the Wehrmacht for gunnery practice. He was still sulking about Prague. Armed with his experiences of the Czech defenses, he toured his own West Wall before returning to Munich on October 14. He saw the new Czech foreign minister Chvalkovsky and uttered furious threats about how quickly he could crush them were they ever to transgress. On October 21 Hitler issued plans to take the port of Memel.

The Slovaks declared themselves an autonomous region on the 7th, just as Göring took off for a tour of the new German
Gaue
centered on the town of Reichenberg, where Henlein had established his headquarters. Göring was convinced that the rest of Bohemia and Moravia would fall like ripe fruit into German hands. There were drawbacks for the Nazis: Eventually Germany would acquire all those Czech Jews who had failed to flee, just as they had gained a further 200,000 Jews in Austria. These disadvantages would become all the greater when Germany invaded Poland a year later. It was
relatively
easy to find homes for lawyers and doctors of the sophisticated assimilated Jews of Vienna and Prague, with contacts abroad who could issue them with guarantees, but there would be few if any takers for the shtetl Jews. As Germany absorbed more and more land to the east, the likelihood of a “radical” solution to the “Jewish problem” became all the greater.

Yet more doors were closing. On October 1, Argentina threatened to revoke six hundred visas it had granted to Jews from the Reich. This would also affect those traveling through Argentina to the landlocked South American states. George Rublee, who had been left with the unenviable task of implementing the decisions taken at Evian, quickly made them reconsider. On October 5 the Swiss police president, Dr. Rothmund, finally succeeded in putting pressure on the German authorities to stamp Jewish passports with a large red J, better to identify would-be Jewish immigrants and turn them back at the frontier. Otherwise they would interpret the passport as invalid. This was the final stage of a long process of trying to make Jewish passports distinct from those of Gentiles. The Swiss authorities had clearly had enough: 7,000 Jews had settled in the country since 1933; 2,000 of them had arrived illegally from Austria. The Polish government adopted the same policy the very next day.

On the 6th a letter went out from the SS man Peworezky to the SD in Vienna. An operation was planned in the suburb of Wieden for the 10th that would encourage as many Jews as possible to hurry up and leave. The first to be evicted were Czech Jews. Any Jews who did not possess the requisite papers would simply be pushed over the frontier into rump Czechoslovakia. If they were penniless, they were to be given forty RM. It was to be dressed up to look like a “spontaneous demonstration” as the Party was not meant to be behind it. Force would combat resistance. Jews were cleared from houses in the prosperous areas of Ottakring, Hernals, Währing, and Döbling and boarded on trains. No passports were required. The next day Jews in the suburbs of Mauer, Atzgersdorf, Liesing, Percholdsdorf, and Mödling were accorded the same treatment. They had to hand over their keys.

On the 7th the Nazis celebrated their victory in the Sudetenland by intimidating Jews in the plush Viennese suburb of Döbling, threatening them with “Dachau or worse.” The
Times
actually reported that Jews were being released from Dachau and alluded to the interest in baptism among the assimilated Jews of the city: “It is reliably reported that besides Mr Frederick Richter, the verger of the Anglican Church in Vienna (who is a British subject of Austrian birth), eighteen sextons, registrars, and other officials of various Roman Catholic churches in Vienna have been arrested during the past three months on charges of forging or falsification of baptismal certificates for Jews.” The Nazis were also closing the Catholic associations, bringing them into line with their own and taking away their flags and banners. Religious instruction in schools was being discontinued, and the schools themselves were closed while the regime helped itself to the treasures of Austria’s monasteries. Hundreds of priests had been packed off to Dachau. Religious symbols and holidays came under fire too. The Nazis had enjoyed some success in luring Austrians away from the Church, but for many, the Anschluss was not looking as attractive to pious Austrians or south Germans as it had done in March. It was high time for Cardinal Innitzer to make a stand.

On October 7 he addressed some 6,000 to 8,000 young Catholics in the cathedral with what Goebbels called a “cheeky homily”: “My beloved Catholic youth of Vienna, we will affirm our faith from now on and in these times, with yet more strength and resolution. . . . Christ is our Führer and king! Guard your belief and stand firm! For only belief can bring happiness!”

The homily resulted in a demonstration of support outside the archbishop’s palace: “
Lieber Bischof, sei so nett: zeige Dich am Fensterbrett
” (“Dear Bishop, if you will, show your face at the windowsill”). The youths also cried “Innitzer command, we will obey!”—mocking the Nazi formula “
Führer befehl! Wir folgen!
” (“Führer command! We will obey!”)—and “Christ is our Führer!” A crowd of two hundred Hitler Youths tried unsuccessfully to disperse them and were scattered in their turn. Some of the demonstrators were arrested. The storming of the archbishop’s palace the next day poured cold water on any remaining enthusiasm for Hitler there might have been among the Austrian clergy. Around fifty members of the Hitler Youth aged fourteen to twenty-five spent forty minutes breaking and burning everything they could, including 1,245 windowpanes. What they did not break they stole. They also defenestrated Father Johann Krawarik, breaking his thigh bone.