Central office for Jewish emigration in Vienna

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The Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was an SS office that was set up in August 1938 to accelerate the forced emigration of Austrian Jews and to organize and carry out their deportations from October 1939 . Questions of citizenship , immigration law, foreign exchange and wealth taxation were coordinated with this aim in mind. It was the only authority authorized to issue exit permits for Jews from Austria (1938–1941) with immediate effect.

Pre-war period: foundation and activity

The director, Adolf Eichmann , who was sent to Vienna from Berlin, and his colleague Alois Brunner set exit quotas, which the NSDAP held responsible for the fulfillment of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna during the Nazi regime . The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde was officially closed by the National Socialists in March 1938 and reopened in May 1938 under the name “Jewish Community Vienna”. Its director, now appointed by the National Socialists, was Josef Löwenherz ; Benjamin Murmelstein became head of the “emigration department of the religious community” ; Berthold Storfer played an important role in the organization . This function of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna in the compulsory emigration was later used by the NSDAP in the " Jewish Councils " established by them in many places in order to use structures of the victim community for their destruction.

In the summer of 1938, Löwenherz, Alois Rothenberg and employees of the Jewish Community in Vienna suggested that Eichmann simplify bureaucratic administrative procedures for those wishing to emigrate. The Reich Commissioner Josef Bürckel , who was responsible for “affiliated” Austria , then set up the Central Office for Jewish Emigration on August 20, 1938, which was formally subordinate to Walter Stahlecker , but was actually headed by Eichmann. Later, Franz Josef Huber, as inspector of the Security Police and SD in the Reichsgauen of Vienna, Lower Danube and Upper Danube, officially became the superior of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. Huber, however, delegated numerous tasks to his deputy Karl Ebner , who was considered the "gray eminence" in the Vienna Gestapo . The documented instructions to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration are signed by Ebner.

All the main field offices were represented in the central office and issued “clearance certificates” if there were no arrears from rents, fees, taxes or Jewish property levy and the Reich flight tax had been paid. The applicants were processed as if on an assembly line, so that “Jews wishing to emigrate within a period of eight to fourteen days” were provided with all the necessary papers. Eichmann boasted that he had brought the number of "Jews brought to emigrate" to 350 daily; 38,000 Jews had left Austria legally by the end of September. Reinhard Heydrich even mentioned the number 45,000 on November 12, 1938.

The cost of forced emigration should be paid by the victims. The Jewish Community of Vienna, which was financially overwhelmed by increasing expenditure on “emigration support” and charitable tasks while at the same time income was falling, had already contacted representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee with Eichmann's permission and asked for money. In addition, there were compulsory levies such as a “passport levy” based on wealth to enable poor Jews to leave the country. The primary goal was the most extensive possible robbery of Jewish property in the context of Aryanization . With the Gildemeester campaign, the wealthier Jewish citizens received supposedly preferential treatment. However, it was not about their preference, but about the legalized form of a “skimming” of assets by the National Socialist state (in contrast to “Aryanization” in which individuals close to the NSDAP almost always gained advantages).

Palais Albert Rothschild in Vienna (1906)

The organization and effectiveness of the Viennese “Central Office” housed in the Palais Albert Rothschild soon became the model for the establishment of the German “ Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration ” in Berlin . A central office for Jewish emigration was also recently established in Amsterdam based on the so-called “Vienna Model”.

staff

Alois Brunner, although officially only appointed head of the Vienna Central Office in January 1941, ipso facto took over the management as early as 1939 after Eichmann's departure. A list of the SS members of the central office is not completely preserved, but the following members of the SS were among the 17 to 20 tax and detective officers subordinate to Brunner:

Wartime: deportations and dissolution

During the period of forced emigration, “official operations were practiced at the Vienna Central Office, which were then used for the deportation of Jews”. Although the name of the organization remained unchanged, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration organized the deportation of Austrian Jews from Vienna and carried it out, beginning in October 1939 with the transports to Nisko am San and then in February and March 1941, when over 5,000 Viennese Jews were transported were abducted to ghettos in small Polish towns such as Opole and Kielce . When the practice of state exit permits was ended with a decree of October 18, 1941, in which Heinrich Himmler forbade “Jews” to emigrate across the Reich, the Central Office accelerated the deportations until the “Jewish question” in Vienna was practically “resolved” by the end of 1942 “Was. Of the around 206,000 Jews who lived in Austria in 1938 according to the Nuremberg Laws, only just over 8,000 were left. The staff of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration Vienna was directly responsible for the deportation of at least 48,767 Austrian Jews who were deported and murdered from Vienna.

The Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna continued to exist until it was closed in March 1943. Later deportations of Jewish victims were carried out by the Gestapo in Vienna. Some of the staff at the Vienna Central Office found a new job at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague .

Post War: Law Enforcement

The post-war biographies of the employees of the Central Office in Vienna are very different: some were called to account, but with relatively mild prison sentences (Ernst Girzick, Richard Hartenberger, Franz Novak, Alfred Slawik, Franz Stuschka, Josef Weiszl) with the exception of the death sentences for Anton Brunner, Adolf Eichmann and Karl Rahm. Ernst Brückler, Alois Brunner and Anton Burger escaped every account, their deeds went unpunished in the post-war years. The whereabouts and post-war activities of Ferdinand Daurach, Herbert Gerbing and Anton Zita are still unclear.

Whereabouts of the files

Since the Central Office for Jewish Emigration must be regarded as the “lynchpin of Jewish life and death”, related files were also considered significant in view of the connection with Eichmann, without their whereabouts being completely known. On March 24, 2000, the Berlin research company "Facts & Files" published a press release, which explained that the Berlin historian and archivist Jörg Rudolph is now holding a collection of "Eichmann files" in the former Nazi archive of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR in the Berlin Federal Archives , Hoppegarten interim archives. Rudolph suspected in the press that this find consisted of an estimated "15,000 to 20,000" files, corresponding to around 100,000 individual sheets from Eichmann's Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. This "sensational find" made newspaper headlines worldwide in favor of the company and was also distributed by the Associated Press . In March 2001, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media made special funds totaling five million DM available to the Federal Archives for processing the development arrears in these files. In February 2004 the Federal Archives published the results:

“The press release from 2000 that up to 20,000“ Eichmann files ”are presumably to be found in the“ NS archive ”can now, after the development work has been completed, be relegated to the realm of legends. In fact, the MfS [Ministry for State Security] had put together a small collection of 20 files from various origins, including the SD Main Office, the Secret State Police Office, the SD Upper Section Danube and the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, under the working title “Aktion Eichmann”. In addition, Eichmann's personnel records and a search call from the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime have been handed down. "

The supposed central inventory of the “Eichmann files”, whose exact Federal Archives signatures Rudolph offered to sell in vain to Viennese historians for DM 15,600, ultimately consisted of just under 20 files. Regarding the failed attempt to benefit from ultimately fictitious Holocaust documents, Eva Blimlinger from the Austrian Commission of Historians said: "It is strange that publicly accessible files are offered by third parties."

The central files of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna were probably destroyed at the end of the war, along with other materials from the Reich Security Main Office in the Theresienstadt ghetto . Since this central file inventory no longer exists or has not yet been proven, relevant files for the reconstruction of the activities of the Central Office in Vienna can be found scattered in various archives and holdings, for example in files of the Emigration Fund in the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW) and at the Magistrate of City of Vienna . Almost the entire tradition of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien was transferred to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem after the war. Numerous contemporary testimonies to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna were collected in the archive of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and give perhaps the most precise picture of the precarious situation of the Jewish population in Vienna. The whereabouts of the actual files held by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna remains unclear.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Albrich, Winfried R. Garscha , Martin Polaschek (all three as editors): Holocaust and war crimes in court: The case of Austria. Books on Demand, 2010, 364 pages. (partly online)
  • Götz Aly : Hitler's People's State. Robbery, Race War and National Socialism. 3. Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-10-000420-5 .
  • Gabriel Anderl u. Dirk Rupnow : The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich a. Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 .
  • Jonny Moser : Austria , in Wolfgang Benz (Hsgb.): Dimension des Genölkermord . The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism . Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 .
  • Doron Rabinovici : Instances of Powerlessness. Vienna 1938–1945. The way to the Judenrat. Jüdischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-633-54162-4 .
  • Hans Safrian: Eichmann and his assistants. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12076-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Safrian : Eichmann and his assistants . Frankfurt / Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12076-4 , p. 41.
  2. ↑ Thomas Mang: Gestapo Headquarters Vienna - My name is Huber (Referat), in: Communications of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance No. 164, pp. 1–5. ( PDF )
  3. ↑ Thomas Mang: Gestapo Headquarters Vienna - My name is Huber (Referat), in: Communications of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance No. 164, pp. 1–5. ( PDF )
  4. ↑ Heinz Boberach (Ed.): The reports from the Reich 1938–1945. Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-158-1 , Vol. 2, p. 28.
  5. ↑ Hans Safrian: Eichmann and his assistants . P. 45.
  6. ↑ Shorthand transcript of the discussion of the Jewish question with Göring on November 12, 1938. In: IMT. Volume 28, ISBN 3-7735-2522-2 , Document 1816-PS: S. 532/533 / Document VEJ 2/146 in: 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. 431.
  7. ↑ Hans Safrian: Eichmann and his assistants . P. 40.
  8. ↑ Gabriel Anderl et al. Dirk Rupnow: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 , p. 303.
  9. ↑ Gabriel Anderl et al. Dirk Rupnow: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 , p. 121.
  10. ↑ Gabriel Anderl et al. Dirk Rupnow: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 , pp. 224-225.
  11. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 , p. 450. Zita died on June 16, 1946 in the Prague-Pangratz prison.
  12. ^ HG Adler: The administered human. Studies on the deportation of Jews from Germany . Tübingen, 1974, ISBN 3-168-35132-6 , p. 13.
  13. ↑ Gabriel Anderl et al. Dirk Rupnow: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 , p. 270.
  14. ↑ Jonny Moser: Austria , in Wolfgang Benz (Hsgb.): Dimension des Genölkermord . The number of Jewish victims of National Socialism . Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-04690-2 , p. 70 ff.
  15. ↑ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague - Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism . Munich 2002, ISBN 3-593-37060-3 , p. 261.
  16. ^ Deportation of Viennese Jews , accessed on August 20, 2013.
  17. ↑ Georg M. Hafner et al. Esther Schapira: The Alois Brunner files. Why one of the biggest Nazi criminals is still at large , Frankfurt / M.-New York 2000, ISBN 3-499-61316-6 , p. 38.
  18. ↑ Press release from Facts & Files ( Memento of April 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 21, 2013, on Wayback Machine ( Memento of April 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) saved on April 28, 2013, and as a screenshot ( PDF)
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel, edition of March 27, 2000, Der Wiener Modell by Klaus Wiegreife.
  20. ↑ Comparison: Die Welt, June 30, 2000, Maybe they don't want to stay by Anna Scheer; Berliner Courier, March 26, 2000, New files on Nazi Eichmann ; Orlando Sentinal, March 26, 2000, Eichmann Files Located In Germany, Report Says (in English); Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2000, Files Found on Eichmann's Campaign in Austria . (in English); Associated Press Archives, March 25, 2000.
  21. ↑ Federal Archives report from March 2001 (PDF; 125 kB).
  22. ↑ Federal Archives report from February 2004 (PDF; 132 kB).
  23. ↑ brand eins business magazine , March 2010 edition, Das Bauchfühl des Jäger ( Memento of the original dated December 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Henning Sietz @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.brandeins.de
  24. ^ Profile of the weekly magazine, Volume 31, July 2000, Eichmanns Akten (PDF) by Marianne Enigl.
  25. ↑ Hans-Stephan Brather: Destruction of files by German agencies during the collapse of fascism . Archive messages 8, 1958, 4, p. 115 ff.
  26. ↑ Gabriel Anderl et al. Dirk Rupnow: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a looting institution . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56784-5 , p. 20.