Read about the experiences of Jews who were living in Vienna during the German annexation of Austria.
Eva was the only child born to nonreligious Jewish parents. Her father was a journalist. Eva enjoyed spending time with her cousin Susie, who was two years older. Eva also took special vacations with her mother. Sometimes they went skiing in the Austrian alps, and on other occasions they stayed at her uncle's cabin along the Danube River.
1933-39: When the Germans annexed Austria in 1938, life changed. Eva's father was harassed by the Gestapo for writing articles against the Germans. Her good friends called her bad names because she was Jewish. Eva's parents said they had to escape. Eva and her parents fled by train to Paris. One day there, in her third-grade class, bombs began falling. They raced to the air-raid shelter and put on gas masks. The smell of rubber was overwhelming. Eva felt like she was choking.
1940-44: After the Germans entered Paris in 1940, Eva's family escaped to the unoccupied south. Two years later, when she was 13, Germans occupied the south and they were forced to move on again. During the treacherous trek in the mountains between Switzerland and France, they took refuge in the small French village of St. Martin. The village priest, Father Longeray, let Eva's parents hide in his basement. Eva lived openly in the parish house as a shepherdess. She attended church with the other children and learned the Catholic mass in Latin.
Eva and her parents remained hidden in St. Martin. They were liberated at the end of 1944. In 1948, when Eva was 18, she and her parents immigrated to the United States.
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Judith, nicknamed Julie, was one of five children born to religious Hungarian-Jewish parents in the Burgenland, the eastern province of Austria that was part of Hungary until 1921. She married Tobias Dichter, a traveling salesman from Vienna who had sold merchandise to her father. The Dichters moved to an apartment in Vienna's Jewish Leopoldstadt district, where they raised two children.
1933-39: The Germans have annexed Austria. One week after the annexation, Germans came to Julie's apartment to take her husband and son but left after no one answered the door. Several months later, the Germans confiscated her husband's drugstore and all of its contents ("Aryanization"). Judith and Tobias have urged their children to leave Austria, but Judith and her husband are too old to immigrate. Anyway, the Germans will probably leave old people like them alone.
1940-42: Judith and Tobias have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Last June, for the second time in two years, they were forced to move out of their apartment in Vienna. They were ordered to leave their personal property behind and were put on a transport of 1,000 Jews, many of whom were elderly like them and many of whom they knew. At least their children are safe abroad, and Tobias and Judith are still together. Now, the Germans are telling them that they are to be moved to a work camp.
On September 19, 1942, Julie and her husband were deported to Maly Trostinets, a German killing site near Minsk. They were killed on arrival.
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Ida, born Ida Kohn, was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in the village of Hostoun, near Prague. Her father owned a grocery store in the village, and also recorded the birth, death and marriage certificates in the Jewish community. In 1912 Ida married Josef Edelstein and they moved to Vienna. By 1920 the couple had a son, Wilhelm, and a daughter, Alice.
1933-39: In March 1938 the Germans annexed Austria. In the next few weeks, Ida, along with other Jews, was forced to scrub sidewalks. Often, townspeople jeered at the Jews while they scrubbed. Many Jews were deported, and attacks on Jews went on almost nightly. When Ida's children left for Prague to escape the Nazis, Ida was in despair.
1940-44: In May 1942 Ida was arrested. She was deported with Josef to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There, they found Alice, whom they had not seen since she fled to Prague. In 1943 Alice was put on a "labor" transport. Ida and Josef did not want to be separated from her so they volunteered to go; they were all deported to Auschwitz. In 1944 Ida, forced to stand naked during a selection of able-bodied women, was directed to the gas chambers. Alice begged for her mother's release.
In 1944 Ida Edelstein was gassed at Auschwitz. Her daughter, Alice, was the only member of the Edelstein family to survive the war.
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Alice, born Alice Edelstein, was the youngest of two children raised in a Jewish family in the Bohemian village of Hostoun, near Prague. Shortly after Alice was born, her father moved the family to Vienna. There, Alice's father owned a wholesale shoe business. As a child, Alice attended public school and also received a religious education.
1933-39: After graduating from business school, Alice had a hard time finding a job because of the economic depression in Austria. In 1936 her father let her work in his office, but she was glad to find a job in another office in 1938. Alice was there only one month when the Germans annexed Austria in March. The Nazis began attacking Jews throughout the city. It broke Alice's heart to leave her parents, but she left for Prague to escape the Nazi terror.
1940-44: In May 1942 Alice was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. On arriving she saw her uncle. He told her that her transport was bound for another destination, and the only way she could stay would be if he declared that she was his bride. He did. Alice stayed and her transport left a few days later, though no one knew to where. A year later she was deported to Auschwitz, and from there sent in 1944 with 500 women to work in Hamburg cleaning rubble from the streets and factories.
Alice was eventually deported to the Bergen-Belsen camp where she was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945. Alice was the only member of her family to survive the war.
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