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Violence occured against the Jews immediately with the NAZI seizure of power. The violence was worst in Vienna where most Austrian Jews lived. NAZI students attacked Jewish students and professors in universities. The local NAZIs tried to dream up humiliating torments for the Jews. Jews at random were dragged into streets to scrub the sidewalks sometimes with toothbrushes on their hands and knees--surounded by taunting crowds. It was considered a treat to find Jews and force them to scrub off the Heil Schuschnigg
slogans that had been painted on the sidewalks. NAZIs stood by Jewish shops and roughed up patrons, making them wear traitor signs around their necks. One observer writes, "With bare hands, university professors were compelled to scrub the streets. Devout, white beared Jews were dragged into the temple and forced by howling youths to do deep knee bends and shout 'Heil Hitler' in chorous. Innocent persons were caught en masse in the street like rabbits and dragged off to sweepmout the latrines of the SA barricks. All the morbidly filthy hate fantasies orgiastically conceived in the course of many nights were released in broad daylight." [Zweig, pp. 446ff.] A Vienna Jew whose parents were arrested and murdered by the NAZIs, described on a British television broadcast how quickly racial persecution appeard in Vienna. This was a city with a long history of Jewish life and a Jewish population of about 10 percent. "What happened in Germany over 5 years, happened in Vienna in 5 days. We had no idea that we would face such violence." [Gershon] As Austria was now part of the Reich, the full force of the Nuremberg Laws and countless other anti-Jewish laws were brought to bear on Austrian Jews. After the Anchluss, the fate of Austrian Jews becomes fused with that of the German Jews. Unlike German Jews, however, they, had only a year and a half to escape before the onset of the War was to make escape virtually impossible.
Gershon, Evan. British television interview, March 12, 2008.
Zweig, Stefan. Die Welt von Gerstern.
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