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[Page 140]
Austrian Jewish D.P Camps
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| Austria was divided into four military allied zones. Vienna, the capital of Austria represented by a black dot, was also divided into four zones but was located deep in the Soviet zone. |
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In 1938, Austria, with its Jewish population of 192,000, was annexed by Nazi Germany. Almost immediately after the annexation, the Nazis started implementing strict anti–Jewish legislation. During the Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) in November, 1938, most of the synagogues in Vienna were burned and thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps. After the outbreak of the war, Austrian Jews were deported to Eastern Europe and later to extermination camps. Approximately 70,000 Austrian Jews perished during the Holocaust, while more than 100,000 emigrated mainly to the United States, South America and the United Kingdom. One of the few temples to survive the Kristallnacht pogrom was the Jewish CityTemple built in the years 1825–26 by Josef Kornhäusel, the most eminent architect of the Vienna Biedermeier era. He designed the building's interior and the religious objects as well. Since only Catholic buildings were places of worship permitted to stand adjacent to major streets, the synagogue was fitted into an apartment complex: This is the reason that it was the only building, of 94 Jewish synagogues and temples, to survive the November pogroms of 1938 (November 9–10) without being completely destroyed.
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With the end of the war, there were about 50,000 Jewish concentration camp survivors in Germany and Austria.[1] It is estimated that there were about 8,000 in Austria. Most of the Jews from France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia returned to their native countries. As mentioned previously, most of the Polish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jewish survivors refused to return to their native countries. Austria was liberated in April, 1945 by Soviet troops. On April 13, 1945, the Soviet zone of Austria was established. In August, 1945, the United States, British and French zones were established in Venia, Austria. Vienna saw the return of about 2,000 Austrian Jews to the city. Thousands of Jewish D.P.s began to arrive in the city, mainly from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Entire transports of Jewish refugees led by Brichah guides came by train, bus or trucks.
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Czechoslovakia for Vienna, Austria |
Some Hungarian Jews who had been deported to Austria remained helpless, not knowing where to turn for help. They included some 16,000 Jews originally from Hungary who had been deported to Vienna in 1944 as forced labor. There were also between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews who had been liberated from the concentration camps in Upper Austria. At the time, some 1,650,000 foreigners were present in Austria. The Allies' goal was to repatriate all of these homeless people as quickly as possible. The Allied armed forces took care of those Jewish survivors in Austria who, immediately after their liberation, were unable for health reasons to start their homeward trip. Especially, Jews from Hungary tried to return home as soon as they were in a position to travel. About 130,000 Jewish D.P.s passed through Austria between its liberation and the mass emigration of 1948. The first D.P. camps in Austria were opened by UNRRA in 1945. They were administered by UNRRA (later IRO) and the US Army. There were altogether 12 Jewish D.P. camps in Austria. The majority of them were closed by 1952.
Jewish D.P.s preferred Vienna to other Austrian cities because the metropolis offered the anonymity that enabled Holocaust survivors to feel safe in Austria. Immediately after liberation, there was no organized help for the Jewish survivors. The Brichah movement did not yet have a base in Vienna, and foreign aid organizations had not yet been authorized to operate. Those organizational structures, which developed slowly during this initial period, were important in the long run for the situation in Vienna and the activities of the Brichah. In contrast to the situation in the Austrian provinces, in Vienna the Brichah was not so obviously involved in the internal affairs of the D.P. camps, although the JDC provided the offices of the Brichah headquarters and placed the Brichah agents on their payroll. In addition, the headquarters of all the important relief organizations were also situated in Vienna. This concentration of Allied occupation authorities, the head offices of UNRRA, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and the International Committee for Transient Jewish Ex–internees and Refugees (known as the International Committee) made it possible for the Jewish refugees living in Vienna to apply for help from the various relief committees. In addition to the city's geographical location, this infrastructure turned Vienna into one of the major bases of illegal aid to Jews escaping from the East. Apart from Jewish relief organizations, it was, above all, UNRRA that assumed limited responsibility for the foreign Jews living outside the D.P. camps in the U.S. sector. This responsibility covered welfare, assistance with repatriation, and the distribution of clothing and daily necessities. During the immediate postwar months a vital role was played by the International Committee, which fought for the Jewish refugees' interests even before the Brichah had a base in Vienna. The International Committee was set up in August, 1945, with the authorization of the Austrian federal government and the endorsement of the Allied military authorities, as an “independent and non–partisan relief organization and at the same time an umbrella organization of all Jewish relief committees.” The key figure on this committee was Bronislaw Teichholz, who had previously established central committees in Hungary
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and Romania and had been sent to Vienna by the International Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency to set up a relief committee in Austria.
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Stanislaw Teicholz, a Jew from Lemberg, Poland, had survived the war, joined the Brichah and was appointed to head the Rothschild Hospital medical center and the D.P. refugee center attached to the hospital in Vienna. The committee was granted the keys to The Rothschild Hospital, named after its founder,
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Baron Anselm von Rothschild. It was the hospital of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna, Austria, from its opening in 1873 until its closure by the Nazis in 1943. After World War II, it served as a hospital for sick and infirm displaced persons, housing as many as 600 refugees. Teicholtz converted the refugee center into a transit camp. Refugees remained for a short period of time at the camp and proceeded to other D.P. camps. Teicholz opened the place to all Jewish refugees in Vienna. He contacted the JDC to help with food and medical supplies to reopen the medical sections of the hospital. He also contacted UNRRA and the American army for help. The American army as supportive since Teicholz took the refugees off their hands. They even provided him with food for the refugees. Medical equipment and staff had to be brought from the United States. This was not the only hospital in Austria; there were other hospitals, clinics and infirmaries that provided medical aid to the Jewish
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Brichah Commander in Vienna, Austria |
survivors of the concentration camps and to the Jewish refugees who arrived from Eastern Europe. To provide for all these and other needs, the JDC had huge warehouses where supplies arrived from the United States to be used to aid the Jewish population throughout Austria and Germany.
The stream of Polish Jewish refugees kept increasing, especially after the pogrom in Kielce. The number of Jewish refugees who arrived at the camp frequently reached 8,000 people, all needing care. The hospital was horribly overcrowded and the Brichah tried to move the refugees quickly, but the numbers kept growing. The Brichah sent Asher Ben–Natan (also known as Arthur Pier) from Palestine to take control of the Brichah in Vienna. Ben–Natan was a native of Vienna and very familiar with the city that he had left a few years earlier.
Asher Ben–Natan was born Arthur Piernikartz in Vienna, Austria, on February 15, 1921. His father, Natan Piernikartz, operated a clothing business in the Austrian capital. He attended a Hebrew high school and was a member of the Young Maccabi Zionist youth organization. When Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany in 1938, Ben–Natan fled to Palestine, with his family following soon after. At the end of the war in Europe, Ben–Natan was sent back to Austria as
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head of the Brichah. As a cover, he worked as a news correspondent under the pseudonym Arthur Pier. The Brichah itself was able to set up a group in Vienna several months after liberation with the help of Bronislaw Teichholz, before Asher Ben–Natan took over control of the Brichah on November 1, 1945. In these first months after the end of the war, the Brichah's work was particularly difficult, for a number of reasons. Besides its activities of safely smuggling refugees from the East to Vienna and then on to the American zone, one of its tasks was to find foodstuffs in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and have it sent it to Vienna,
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where there was a food shortage. In these first months after the end of the war, the Brichah's work was particularly difficult due to the Soviet checkposts. Vienna was surrounded by the Soviet zone and Soviet soldiers checked papers. Bribes usually cleared the road. The Soviet authorities had no objection to Jews traveling west. The Brichah transports left Vienna and headed to the American occupied zone in Austria and then would be transported to the D.P. camps in the American zone of Germany. Providing the transports with food and other needs was a great problem for the JDC's relief actions in Austria as food and other relief items had to be obtained via the JDC representatives in Italy. The first Brichah headquarters were located at the Westminster Hotel, in 5 Harmoniegasse, in Vienna's ninth district. Later they moved to 2 Frankgasse, in the same district. Officially, an American D.P. camp was accommodated in the building at No. 2 Frankgasse, but in actual fact the “camp,” consisting of two apartments, served in its entirety until its closure in 1949 as the Brichah headquarters responsible for the whole of Austria. Asher Ben–Natan headed the Brichah in Austria from November, 1945, until his return to Palestine in mid–July, 1947. He was not only in charge of the heads of the various local Brichah points in the Austrian provinces, but also had under his command his Vienna staff, consisting on average of between 15 and 20 individuals. His successor, until August, 1948, was Amos Rabel. The Brichah managed to gain the Americans' sympathy and practical help, mainly through personal contacts with those responsible for the American occupying power. Nevertheless, the Brichah still needed organizations such as the International Committee or the JDC, which in official matters could ask for the necessary help. In the JDC's view, the Brichah proved to be too independent but, at the same time, too powerful to be ignored. Vienna was not only the location of a series of D.P. camps, of which 13 were for Jewish DPs only, but also of the UNRRA headquarters. The D.P. camp administration was initially under the control of the DP Division of the Vienna Area Command of the U.S. Army. On May 15, 1946, the administration was handed over to the UNRRA organization.
A further area of UNRRA activities was the creation of vocational training possibilities for the D.P.s. To this end, workshops were set up and provided with the requisite material for operations. In addition, special service installations, such as mail services and the exchange of information, were set up. All of this also helped to improve discipline within the camps. For its part, UNRRA handed over responsibility for the camps' internal affairs to the D.P. camp leadership, which was on the whole democratically elected. This transferred greater autonomy to the camps, so that by the end of 1946, all camps were largely administratively independent. They had their own camp leaders and welfare committees, their own D.P. doctors and nurses, and their own staff, who looked after meal preparation, stores and keeping the camp clean. This transfer of authority to the D.P.s themselves enabled the Brichah, by arrangement with the International Committee, to bring influence to bear on the internal administration by trying to put its own people in decisive positions, something which came about more in the U.S. occupation zone than in Vienna. The differences among the Jewish D.P. camps in Vienna were a result of their absorption capacity, as well as the variability of the groups accommodated and the length of time that these camps operated.
The biggest and most important Jewish D.P. camp was in the former Rothschild Hospital on the Waehringerguertel Ring Road in the 18th district in the U.S. sector mentioned above. Until its closure in October, 1942, the Rothschild Hospital had been a Jewish hospital. As early as the summer of 1945, the Americans made the complex of buildings available to the Jewish D.P.s as a transit and nursing camp, but it did not open officially until October 11, 1945. The fact that this building was able to be used for D.P.s after the war, was the outcome of negotiations with the American occupation authorities and Bronislaw Teichholz, who insisted that the entire hospital area be placed at the disposal of Jewish refugees. Other reports indicate that Dr. Emil Tuchmann played a major role in the return of the Rothschild Hospital to the Vienna Jewish Community. Tuchmann was one of the most controversial figures of the postwar Jewish community. Because of his prewar position in the Vienna Congregation, during the Nazi period he had been appointed medical director of the Jewish Hospital at the suggestion of the Jewish Community and with the approval of the Gestapo. In the light of this “career,” criticism was therefore voiced when he became the first JDC representative in Vienna right after the war. In view of this delicate situation, Tuchmann was replaced by Dr. J. Benson Saks as the new JDC representative in Vienna.
As already mentioned, the Rothschild compound had a medical section that was in shambles in 1945. UNRRA, the American army and the JDC provided medical supplies, and some medical items were flown from the United States to the Vienna Hospital. Slowly the various medical clinics began to operate and provide medical help to the Jewish D.P. refugees on their way to Germany. It was very difficult to assemble the necessary medical staff but things improved with time.
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ORT's work with Holocaust survivors in Austria started at the end of 1946, about a year after the establishment of ORT vocational courses in the D.P. camps of Germany. From the very beginning, work in the two countries was developing in a slightly different way. First, according to an ORT report, “Contrary to the development in Germany, ORT found in Austria no spontaneously created training workshop, etc. Everything had to be planned and done from the very beginning. This fact, together with the lack of premises for training workshops, caused a delay in their work, but at the same time made for systematic procedure. The equipment for the various workshops was sent from Switzerland.”
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Second, since most of the Jewish D.P.s in Austria were concentrated in camps surrounding larger cities, it was decided to organize central ORT schools and training workshops in the larger cities of Salzburg, Linz and Steyr rather than in the camps. This way the trainees could escape the atmosphere of the camp for the duration of the classes and finally feel fully liberated. The transitional character of Austrian DP camps meant that ORT's training in Austria was based on accelerated training courses rather than more thorough, full–time training. In December, 1946, the first ORT trade school in Austria was opened in Vienna. In March, 1947, ORT institutions in Austria had an enrollment of 148, and only six months later, in October 1947, of 1,065 trainees. 340 of these students attended the vocational school in Vienna. By the end of 1947,additional schools were opened in Ebelsberg, Steyr, Wels, Salzburg, Hofgastein, Hallein, Linz and Bindermilch. At that time, the schools conducted programs in 50 trades ranging from dressmaking to technical chemistry, optics and building trades. Newly introduced courses included window glazing, upholstery, invisible–mending, pastry–making and engraving trades.
According to ORT, “The D.P.s wanted to be trained primarily in modern technical trades, while in the needle trades – formerly one of the Jewish traditional male trades – 97 percent of our students were women. This choice of modern technical and industrial trades was encouraged by our organization in order to facilitate the resettlement of its students in such industrial countries as the United States, Canada and Australia and also for Israel, where the need for highly qualified manpower was a vital problem for the future.”
As in other countries, ORT's work with Holocaust survivors in Austria came to an end in the late 1940s. As emigration progressed and the D.P.s were leaving for Australia, Canada, the United States and Israel, ORT schools in Austria were closing down and by the end of 1950, only schools in Vienna and Hallein were still running vocational courses. English and Hebrew language courses were held in Vienna, Hallein, Asten and Wels. There were also many small D.P camps where the young people trained to become farmers. These camps were organized along Zionist political lines and were in contact with with the Palestinian organizations that had similar views.
The Child Welfare Division of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) accepted responsibility for providing care for unaccompanied Jewish children in the U.S. Zone. They coordinated with the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Central Committee for Liberated Jews. The Jewish D.P. population in the American zone kept growing at a very fast rate. Between January, 1946 and October, 1946, the number of registered Jewish D.P.s nearly quadrupled, from 36,000 to 141,000. According to the survey, 71% were from Poland, 6% from Hungary, 4% from Czechoslovakia, 2.5% from Germany, 2.5% from Romania, 2% from Austria, and something over 10% were from other countries or stateless. The total number of Jewish D.P.s who resided in camps or communities in Germany, Austria and Italy during the period from 1945 to 1952 is estimated at more than 250,000.
All D.P. camps and D.P. institutions were maintained by UNRRA. Another voluntary organization that helped the Jewish D.P. camps was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), known colloquially as the “Joint.” The JDC delivered supplementary food, clothing and medical supplies to the camps; operated tracing bureaus to help survivors locate relatives and friends; ran vocational, educational and cultural programs; and assisted D.P.s in emigration matters. The JDC began sending teams into Germany in June, 1945, but was initially hindered in its operations by the U.S. Army's reluctance to grant it wholesale permission to enter in all districts. After the Harrison report, the Army was more cooperative, and in the third week of August, the JDC established headquarters in Munich, at Siebertstrasse 3, where it remained for the next several years. The JDC's expenditures in Germany, Austria, and Italy combined were $729,000 in 1945, and reached a peak of over $11 million in 1947. World ORT had a network of vocational schools for D.P.s, teaching a wide range of skills such as tailoring, carpentry, metalworking, mechanics, electrical work and dental technology, with accompanying theoretical courses. The first such school was established in the Landsberg camp near Munich in August, 1945, by Jacob Oleiski, who had been the ORT leader in Lithuania before the war. At the peak of its activity in Germany, in January 1948, ORT ran 496 classes.
The JDC played a vital role in supplementing the needs of the Jewish D.P.s that UNRRA did not provide. The organization had offices in all the Jewish camps and assisted the D.P.s in providing for their needs, including finding relatives in the United States or writing English letters. The JDC had enormous warehouses where supplies were kept and an immense fleet of trucks that distributed these supplies. The DPs wanted to be trained primarily in modern technical trades, while in the needle trades–formerly one of the Jewish traditional male trades– 97 per cent of their students were women. This choice of modern technical and industrial trades was encouraged by the JDC in order to facilitate the resettlement of Jewish refugees in the United States, Canada, Australia and also Israel, where the need for skilled workers was in great demand. By the end of 1950, there were still some vocational training centers in in Vienna and Hallein.
JDC warehouse in Europe
The fact that the country of Austria, and the city of Vienna in particular, were divided into zones created major problems for the Austrian JDC. Each military zone was administratively independent and headed by military men. The JDC appointed officials in every section to expedite the smooth running of the organization, except in the Soviet sectors, which had no centers. The French zones had a few small Jewish refugee camps but were not very accommodating to new Jewish arrivals. The British zones did everything in their power to limit the arrival of newcomers in accordance with British foreign policy. The American zones had the largest number of Jewish refugee camps and facilities. The Brichah directed the flow of Jewish refugees to the American zones where they infiltrated the existing camps. In 1947, the Austrian JDC placed all its activities under the leadership of Harold Trobe.
Harold Trobe was born in Pennsylvania and graduated from the Columbia University School of Social Work. He began his career with the Joint Distribution Committee in 1944. He was appointed Director of Operations in Lisbon, JDC's wartime base and a haven for refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied countries and seeking to emigrate to Palestine and the Americas. After liberation, Trobe was named JDC Country Director of Czechoslovakia, and charged with administering a welfare program for survivors. In 1946, he was assigned to supervise JDC activities for Jewish refugees and displaced persons in northern Italy. From 1947 to 1952, he served as Country Director for Austria.
Ehud Avriel was the man who coordinated all the Brichah activities in Central Europe. Avriel, born Georg Überall in Vienna, Austria, in 1917, was educated at a local gymnasium. He was a member of the Blue-White movement (the first Zionist youth movement), and between 1938 and 1940 worked for the Youth Aliyah office in occupied Vienna.
He emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1940 and settled in kibbutz Neot Mordechai. He joined the Haganah and was involved in the Rescue Committee assisting Jews fleeing Europe. After the war, he was sent to Europe where he joined the Brichah. His familiarity with the language and the country helped him in dealing with various military commanders and local authorities.
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