Alois Rothenberg

Alois Rothenberg (born December 15, 1889 ) was a Jewish mineral oil trader with a doctorate and the head of the Palestine Office in Vienna during the Nazi era .

SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Eichmann , who arrived in Vienna a few days after the so-called annexation of Austria to the German Reich , ordered six leading and still-free representatives of the Jewish community to be summoned towards the end of the month - the President and the Vice-President of on March 18 Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien , which was closed to the National Socialists , Desider Friedmann and Robert Stricker , and Jakob Ehrlich, formerly Vice-President of the Kultusgemeinde and President of the “Zionist Organization”, were arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp - for unconditional obedience and uncompromising cooperation according to his instructions to promote. He insisted that one of the six be named as the person responsible in this regard and suggested Adolf Böhm (1873–1941), factory owner, historiographer of the Zionist movement and president of the Jewish National Fund in Vienna. Since Böhm's health was already in bad shape due to Eichmann's constant distress, the six nominated the youngest among them, Alois Rothenberg from the Palestine Office in Vienna, instead. At the beginning of May the Palestine Office, the Hechalutz youth organization and the Jewish Community of Vienna were reopened. Rothenberg was appointed head of the Palestine Office by Eichmann, and the full-time director of the Vienna Jewish Community, Joseph Löwenherz , who had recently been released from prison , was reinstated by Eichmann.

Rothenberg and Löwenherz were now the only two officially recognized contact persons of the Jewish population with Eichmann and the Gestapo . Eichmann's despotic demeanor, his undisguised extortionate threats and the collective liability he practiced left little room for maneuver and in the course of time demoted the Jewish representatives de facto to vicarious agents. All existing Jewish organizations were to be brought together in a single organization, whereby any interference by Jewish organizations from the Old Reich or even organizational merging with them was prohibited. On the other hand, Eichmann ordered the establishment of contacts with foreign Jewish aid organizations in order to persuade them to help finance Jewish emigration, and Rothenberg and Löwenherz therefore traveled abroad several times. The success of a Bittstellerreise the two to London and Paris from June 4 to June 16, 1938 was the promise of a future monthly support of 100,000 dollars by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Central British Fund for Jewish Community Vienna .

Under Eichmann's pressure, the main task of the Palestine Office and the Zionist National Association, which was now headed by Eduard Pachtmann, was to prepare and organize Jewish “emigration”. On August 20, 1938 - presumably at the suggestion of Löwenherz and Rothenberg - the Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in Vienna . But while Löwenherz and Rothenberg saw the purpose of this office in the simplification of administrative procedures for those wishing to emigrate, it was used by Eichmann to deprive every applicant of their property as far as possible. "Clearance certificates" were issued if there were no "arrears" from rents, fees, taxes or Jewish property levy and "passport levy " and Reich flight tax had been paid.

Since Great Britain issued only a few immigration permits (“certificates”) for Jews to the British mandate of Palestine because of the violent clashes between Arabs and Jews, only a few Austrian Jews were able to emigrate there despite the “clearance certificate”. In view of the onslaught of people willing to leave the country, Rothenberg asked the Jewish Agency for thousands more certificates for 1938, but only got a few dozen. For the whole of 1938, certificates were awarded to Austria in 1964 - considerably more than the 214 in 1937, but - corresponding to around 1% of Vienna's Jewish population at the time - in no way appropriate to the onslaught of desperate people.

After the Reichspogromnacht , at the beginning of December 1938, 1,319 Viennese Jews who were in possession of entry permits to various host countries were still in concentration camps as " protective prisoners " . The Jewish Community of Vienna and the Palestine Office were faced with “a great onslaught of desperate and perplexed” people, which impaired the “normal activities” of their emigration departments. Löwenherz and Rothenberg obtained from Eichmann that the deadline for conditions to leave the Reich was extended to eight weeks.

As head of the Palestine Office, Rothenberg worked with the Hechaluz , the leading Zionist organization, as well as with the child and youth Aliyah and the young religious Zionist pioneers. Rothenberg wanted to distribute the limited number of immigration permits to Palestine among all Austrian Zionists and thus got into a conflict with Ze'ev Willy Ritter vom Hechaluz, who claimed all permits for his association.

Georg Landauer described Rothenberg as good-willed and hard-working, but weak, ill and exhausted and overly cautious because of his constant intercourse with the Gestapo, someone who tried to avoid anything that could arouse suspicion or objection and was not up to his task.

Alois Rothenberg emigrated officially to Trieste in 1940, from there by ship to another country. Whether this was the British mandate of Palestine or another country is (so far) unknown.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ However, it is not certain whether the Alois Rothenberg listed here is the same person.
2. ↑ Friedman and Stricker were later released, asked to September 1942 in Vienna under house arrest, then to the Theresienstadt concentration camp deported and 1944 in Auschwitz murdered. Ehrlich died in Dachau in May 1938 as a result of his severe abuse.
3. ↑ Böhm suffered a nervous breakdown soon afterwards and was murdered in the Hartheim killing center in March 1941 as part of the Nazi euthanasia murders (" Aktion T4 ") .
4. ^ The Nizkor Project: The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. Session 16
5. ↑ Erika Weinzierl, Otto Dov Kulka (ed.): Expulsion and new beginnings: Israeli citizens of Austrian origin. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-205-05561-6 , pp. 201-203.
6. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p 40.
7. ↑ Doron Rabinovici: From the Kultusgemeinde to the Council of Elders, 1938 to 1945. ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Traude Bollauf: Maid Emigration. 2nd, revised edition. Lit Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-50196-7 , pp. 113 and 114. (Google Book - digitized version)
9. ↑ Wulff Bickenbach: Justice for Paul Grüninger . Böhlau Verlag , Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20334-4 , p. 92. (Google Book - digitized version)
10. ^ Hana Weiner, Dalia Ofer: Dead-end Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Šabac Group. University Press of America, Lanham, Md./ London 1996, ISBN 0-7618-0199-5 , p. 3.
11. ^ Hana Weiner, Dalia Ofer: Dead-end Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Šabac Group. University press of America, Lanham, Md./ London 1996, ISBN 0-7618-0199-5 , p. 3.
12. ↑ VEJ 2/197, p. 554.
13. ^ Israel Gutman et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust . Munich / Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-492-22700-7 , Vol. 2, p. 1077.
14. ↑ Since 1934 head of the Central Office for the Settlement of German Jews, the so-called "German Department" of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Jerusalem .
15. ↑ Erika Weinzierl, Otto Dov Kulka (ed.): Expulsion and new beginnings: Israeli citizens of Austrian origin. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-205-05561-6 , p. 315.
16. ↑ VEJ 2/56, p. 207.