The Jews of Nazi Vienna, 1938–1945 by Ilana Fritz Offenberger

Author:Ilana Fritz Offenberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319493589
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 5.4Exit Papers; the Assets Declaration Form

Heinrich Offenberger filled out and signed the Vermogensanmeldung on July 12, 1938. He died of heart failure in the IKG hospital four years later in June 1942, just one month after his wife Berta (Monias) was sent on deportation transport #19 from Vienna to Minsk, Maly Trostinec (Credit: OstA/AdR/06/VVst/VA #01953)

The Struggle to Emigrate and the IKG’s Struggle to Facilitate Emigration

Jews feared leaving the language, culture, family, friends, and country they knew. And they were anxious about the uncertainties ahead. But they had little choice. They needed to emigrate. The IKG faced an ominous task trying to aid all these desperate individuals, but remained resilient and dedicated to offering what help it could. People walked into its offices hoping to immigrate to one place and the IKG wound up helping them go somewhere else completely, often somewhere they had never imagined starting a new life. Similarly, people applied to leave with their families, or at least with certain dependents, and ended up leaving alone, or with only one sibling, one parent, or relative. 93 Very rarely did things work out as people hoped or expected. But they took what they could get, made difficult decisions and compromises, and continued to follow the IKG’s instructions and to maintain hope. They turned to the IKG with their troubles and their desperate need for help, and the IKG workers continued their unceasing efforts to help the community escape.

Forty-one-year-old Elisabeth Fellner, divorced, born in Vienna, residing on the popular Taborstrasse in the second district, wrote a desperate letter to the IKG in the summer of 1938 requesting financial aid. She begged that they help pay for her train ticket to Constantinople, where she intended to stay with a friend’s family who would provide her with employment. She had already gathered the funds she could and had paid RM 50 toward the ticket, but she needed a total of RM 155 to cover the cost of the trip. She had lost her job as a bookkeeper on July 1, 1938 and after 24 years of employment had been released with no final pay. She had no money at her disposal and had to give up her apartment in one week (August 31, 1938); she had been selling her furniture to sustain herself. To bolster her plea, she explained that she had always paid her taxes to the Jewish Community on time and that she had never before requested aid from the Community’s welfare services. Additionally, her father had served the Community for over 20 years, working in the cemetery office. All she needed was RM 100 for continental travel to Turkey. Could the IKG help her? 94

Forty-eight-year-old Helene Herz, wife of Oskar Herz and mother of Susanne (16) and Elenore (12), submitted a similarly desperate letter to the Community offices almost 18 months later. Helene had begun her quest to get her family out of Austria shortly after Anschluss but had encountered numerous difficulties along the way. First, she could

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