Bad Ischler milk process

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The Bad Ischl milk trial in 1947 was a political affair in occupied post-war Austria , which was triggered by a demonstration in Bad Ischl , mainly organized by communists , which led to anti-Semitic riots.

prehistory

The Salzkammergut had been in the American zone of occupation since May 1945 , with the US administration under High Commissioner General Geoffrey Keyes representing the highest administrative authority in Upper Austria as well as in Salzburg and at that time also in the Styrian Ausseerland . The US administration therefore also regulated food rationing and took care of the catering for the numerous displaced persons . These DPs were refugees, former forced laborers and liberated concentration camp prisoners who were waiting to be able to return to their homeland or to emigrate overseas and Palestine . There were numerous DP camps in the American zone of occupation in particular , as the refugees hoped for better treatment here. In Bad Ischl, mostly Jewish DPs were quartered in the "Hotel Goldenes Kreuz", which had been requisitioned by the Americans.

The Americans tried to repatriate these displaced persons as quickly as possible or to enable them to emigrate because of the tense supply situation in Austria. However, after anti-Semitic unrest in Poland ( Pogrom of Kielce 1946) and Romania (1947), there were new refugees towards Austria and the supply situation remained tense.

Hunger demonstration

In August 1947, the American administration ordered the replacement of fresh milk rations for young children with dry milk allotments . Then there was a "spontaneous" demonstration by women and mothers in front of the Bad Ischl town hall on August 20, 1947, but this was mainly organized by local representatives of the KPÖ . Communist officials, such as the local councilor Herbert Filla, held protest speeches in front of the crowd. In doing so, however, they made the American administration less responsible for the poor food situation than the numerous DPs. Anti-Semitic slogans were shouted and the Jews housed in Ischl were collectively referred to as surreptitious traffickers . The crowd then moved to the hotel where the Displaced Persons were staying and smashed some window panes with stones. After about three hours, the local gendarmerie broke up the riot without using force.

Milk process

The US administration wanted to nip such escalating protests and anti-Semitic riots in the bud and was therefore looking for those responsible. Shortly afterwards, five Ischl communists and one former National Socialist who were involved in the riots were arrested and tried before the US military tribunal in Linz between September 8 and 15, 1947. They were charged with violating Allied regulations (inciting and participating in a riot, promoting and participating in an illegal gathering).

The verdicts were announced on September 25, 1947. The accused were sentenced to between one and 15 years in prison. In the grounds of the judgment u. a. stated that the rioting "aimed at inciting racial opposition" and "could easily lead to bloodshed in its anti-Semitic stage".

That seemed to close the matter up for the Americans. The KPÖ, on the other hand, did not want to accept the severe punishment of its functionaries. The conviction of the only 24-year-old resistance fighter and former concentration camp inmate Raimund Zimpernik to 15 years in prison particularly aroused people's hearts. The other convicts were the 68-year-old Ischl communist Maria Sams (verdict: one year), the 58-year-old railway pensioner and, for the KPÖ, a member of the Ischl municipal council Herbert Filla (verdict: 10 years), as well as Johann Tosetto, who worked for the KPÖ as Reporters took part in the demonstration (sentence: 2 years). The fifth accused close to the communists was Maria Plieseis , who had previously escaped persecution by the US military tribunal by fleeing to the Soviet occupation zone.

The dairy trial affair

The communists then began a political campaign against the verdicts in the Ischl milk trial. In their opinion, the demonstration had been stormy, but there were no injuries and the executive branch saw no reason to intervene. Furthermore, the convicts were deserved resistance fighters against National Socialism . Raimund Zimpernik was sentenced to ten years in prison when he was not even 18 years old in Berlin in 1942, which he served in the Garsten and Börgermoor concentration camps until the end of the war . After his conviction in the milk trial, he said to the court: "I survived the millennium and will also survive the American century."

The KPÖ also argued that the judgments had not been passed by an Austrian civil court and called for both a reduction in the penalties and the repeal of Allied Ordinance No. 200, the central legal basis for US military justice. This enabled them to present the matter as a patriotic struggle to gain full sovereignty for Austria.

Then there were protest articles and expressions of sympathy for the convicted in Austrian daily newspapers, and Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl of the ÖVP intervened with General Keyes. Because of the impending loss of image, the US High Commissioner reduced the prison sentence to a maximum of one year on October 8, 1947. That ended the affair, and the communists had achieved success.

Historical evaluation

After this matter, Austrian politics quickly returned to daily politics and the Bad Ischler Milch trial no longer played a role in public. The convicts themselves returned to the Salzkammergut after serving their sentence and were no longer politically active, with the exception of Raimund Zimpernik, who was later a councilor for the KPÖ in Ischl. The refugee Maria Plieseis did not return to Ischl until later and worked for the traditional costume manufacturer Lodenfrey from 1961 to 1970, where she was elected chairwoman of the works council.

It was only decades later that historians began to reassess this episode of contemporary history, with opinions still diverging widely. Local historians mostly tried to portray this incident as a less significant event, while others saw it as an example of the latent anti-Semitism that continued to exist after 1945, which could reappear at any time if there was an incident. The former resistance fighters from the Salzkammergut tried in several publications to exonerate their comrades who, in their opinion, were wrongly condemned as a scapegoat. In some cases, the incident was seen as an example of left-wing anti-Semitism in Austria, with which the KPÖ, because of its Stalinist orientation at the time, complied with similar currents in the Soviet Union (campaign against “ rootless cosmopolitans ”). On the other hand, in 1947, as the Cold War began, the communists in Austria were increasingly marginalized. In any case, no conclusive historical assessment of the Bad Ischler milk process has been carried out to date.

On the other hand, the strongly anti-Semitic character of this “hunger demonstration” has been proven by several different sources and testimonies. In the Jewish magazine Der Neue Weg from September 1947 one witness reported:

“Amid screaming and yelling, threatening shaking of fists and wild screams, the crowd [...] moved in front of the Hotel Kreuz. 'Beat the Jews to death!', 'Hang up the Jews!' it sounds in stereotypical repetition. [...] One of the women shouted in front of the office: 'Drown the pig Jews!' and 'Heil Hitler!', but afterwards in front of the Hotel Kreuz, she just as eagerly shouted the words 'Hoch Stalin!' "

However, the convicts could not be proven that they had incited the crowd to these anti-Semitic slogans, nor that they were significantly involved in the organization of the demonstration, in which the then mayor Zeppezauer and district captain Dr. Hodl were present.

The fact that only one week later, on August 28, 1947, the communists organized another hunger demonstration in Braunau am Inn , which did not cause any political waves, has not yet been investigated . Shortly after the demonstrators demanded that the Jewish DPs be deported from the neighboring DP camp in Ranshofen, the makeshift synagogue there was almost completely destroyed by unknown perpetrators.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wiener Kurier , September 25, 1947
  2. ↑ a b Heribert Schiedel: "Heil Hitler!" And "Hoch Stalin!" - The anti-Semitic riots in Bad Ischl and the KPÖ. (No longer available online.) In: Context XXI. Archived from the original on July 8, 2007 ; accessed on March 29, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Franz Kain : Raimund Zimpernik. Farewell to an upright fighter. In: bob.swe.uni-linz.ac.at. Contemporary History Museum Ebensee, July 1997, archived from the original on May 2, 2006 ; Retrieved June 26, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Der Neue Weg , No. 17, September 1947, quoted from Context XXI ( Memento from July 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )