<< Previous | Displaying results 26-50 of 144 for "annexation austria" | Next >>
Johanna was born in Vienna when it was still the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her Christian family experienced the disruption resulting from the empire's collapse, as well as the instability of the Austrian republic. The depression of 1929 hit Vienna especially hard. In 1931 Johanna became a Jehovah's Witness. 1933-39: Johanna traveled constantly in and out of Austria distributing our Jehovah's Witness literature. In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria and her family was subjected to Nazi law;…
Judith Gabriel Dichter was living in Vienna when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. A Jew, she was later deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. On September 19, 1942, she was deported to Maly Trostin...
The eldest of six children born to Catholic parents, Franz was raised in a village in the part of Austria known as Carinthia. His father was a farmer and quarryman. Disillusioned with Catholicism, his parents became Jehovah's Witnesses during Franz's childhood and raised their children in their new faith. As a teenager, Franz was interested in painting and skiing. 1933-39: Franz was apprenticed to be a house painter and decorator. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, like other Jehovah's…
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…
Hansi, as he was called by family and friends, was the third of six children born to Roma ("Gypsy") parents who were Roman Catholic. The family wagon traveled with a caravan that spent winters in Vienna, Austria's capital, and summers in the Austrian countryside. The Stojkas belonged to a tribe called the Lowara Roma, who made their living as itinerant horse traders. 1933-39: Hansi grew up used to freedom, travel and hard work. He was 9 years old and their wagon was parked for the winter in a Vienna…
Wilhelm was the oldest of two children in a Jewish family living in the Habsburg capital of Vienna. Shortly after Wilhelm was born, World War I broke out. Because of food shortages, Wilhelm and his mother left for her hometown of Hostoun, near Prague. After the war they returned to Vienna where his father had remained to run his shoe business. As a young man, Wilhelm worked for his father. 1933-39: In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria. Soon after, the Germans arrested Wilhelm because he was a Jew dating…
Josef was one of seven children born to a Jewish family in the Czechoslovakian village of Hvozdnice. After graduating from school, Josef worked as a salesman in Vienna. In 1912 he married Ida Kohn, and the couple had a son before he left to fight for Austria in World War I. After the war, they had a daughter. 1933-39: Because of the economic depression of the 1930s, it was difficult for Josef to make a living in his wholesale shoe business. In 1938 the Germans annexed Austria [the Anschluss], and soon…
Members of the League of German Girls wave Nazi flags in support of the German annexation of Austria. Vienna, Austria, March 1938.
A streetcar decorated with swastikas passes billboards displaying Hitler's face. The billboards urge Austrians to vote "Ja" (Yes) in the upcoming plebiscite on the German annexation of Austria. Vienna, Austria, April 1938.
Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, bringing approximately 200,000 additional Jews under Nazi rule. The Nazi regime quickly extended anti-Jewish legislation to Austria. At the time, the majority of Austrian Jews...
The Mauthausen concentration camp was established shortly after the German annexation of Austria (1938). Prisoners in the camp were forced to perform crushing labor in a nearby stone quarry and, later, to construct subterranean tunnels for rocket assembly factories. US forces liberated the camp in May 1945. In this footage, starving survivors of the Mauthausen concentration camp eat soup and scramble for potatoes.
March 14, 1938. On this date, Helen Baker documented what she witnessed when Germany annexed Austria. Helen and her husband Ross Baker were Americans living in Vienna.
Read about the experiences of Jews who were living in Vienna during the German annexation of Austria.
Gregor was born in a village in the part of Austria known as Carinthia. During World War I, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army and was wounded. Raised a Catholic, Gregor and his wife became Jehovah's Witnesses during the late 1920s. Gregor supported his wife and six children by working as a farmer and quarryman. 1933-39: The Austrian government banned Jehovah's Witness missionary work in 1936. Gregor was accused of peddling without a license and briefly jailed. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938,…
Liane's Polish-born Jewish parents were married in Vienna, where they lived in a 14-room apartment in a middle-class neighborhood near the Danube River. Liane's father, a dentist, had his office in their home. 1933-39: After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Liane's father was found dead, a probable suicide. In May 1939, four months before war broke out, her mother booked passage on the St. Louis, a ship bound for Cuba. But Cuban authorities turned the ship back. Along with some other refugees from the…
Hilda Rattner (born Hilda Wiener ) was born into a Jewish family in Vienna on June 14, 1904. Not long after her birth, Hilda’s parents realized that she was deaf. Two years later, their fourth child, Richard, was born, and he was also deaf. Vienna in particular had a very vibrant deaf community where Jews and non-Jews mixed freely. Hilda and her brother Richard attended a Jewish school, where they learned to sign, and it was through these associations and activities that Hilda met Isadore Rattner, a…
Learn more about the plight of Jewish refugees who attempted to escape Germany between 1933 and 1939.
Before the Nazi rise to power, the countries of Europe had varied and vibrant Jewish communities. By 1945, two out of every three European Jews had been killed.
Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis. The Nazis abhorred his new science and Jewish heritage. His works were burned in Germany in 1933. Learn more.
After the Anschluss (German annexation of Austria), Austrian Jewish refugees disembark from the Italian steamship Conte Verde. Shanghai, China, December 14, 1938.
In the 1930s, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the British government pursued a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany to avoid war. Learn more.
Read the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation's short biography of Harry Burger.
American journalist, foreign correspondent, author, and pioneer radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was one of the key observers and chroniclers of the Nazi regime.
Karl Kautsky was a leading Marxist and Socialist theoretician in the Austrian Social Democratic movement. His books were burned in Nazi Germany in 1933. Learn more.
Learn more about the history of Yugoslavia before World War II and the Axis invasion of 1941.
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.