[A.] Austria
[6.4. NS Austria: "US"
Jewish
organizations can only watch]
["US" Jewish
organizations have to accept the emigration wave in
Austria - JDC money for emigration]
Löwenherz, who soon became the guiding spirit of IKG, was
not trusted by JDC; at the end of 1938 Morris C. Troper,
who succeeded Kahn as European director of JDC, called him
a "Gestapo agent".
(End note 18: Germany-ICA, Troper memo, 12/26/38 [26
December 1938])
[This seems to be the right trace: Gestapo "organized"
emigration to Palestine of German and Austrian Jews for
the Holy Land by Haavarah and Zentralstelle and the
Zionists are satisfied, and the liberal Jews can only
watch, and the Yiddish Jews have no chance].
Yet there was no alternative, and IKG had to be supported.
Of the JDC contribution, 60 % went to emigration. This was
not done, however, through a direct contribution of
American dollars to the German treasury. The procedure was
to pay for the prospective emigrant's tickets and other
expenses outside the Reich; in return, money paid by the
emigrant to IKG was utilized to cover that institution's
expenses. It is true that this cost the Germans nothing -
or, as Heydrich put it, Jewish emigration was effected
"without any payment by the German side, not even in the
form of 'additional exports.' "
(End note 19: Helmuth Krausnick: Judenverfolgung; In:
Martin Broszat et alia: Die Anatomie des SS-Staates; Olten
und Freiburg 1965, 2:341)
[It's even more extreme: NS occupation robbed the Jews and
the Jewish organizations are financing also their
emigration trip. Also "neutral" Swiss "friends" were
granted by Hitler during the aryanizations...].
But Germany did not acquire any foreign currency through
this method - and Jewish property was in the Nazis' hands
in any case. JDC visitors were treated well by the
Gestapo, and the Nazi agents they met became "rather
amiable young fellows" when discussing financial
arrangements; but the message that they welcomed "our
cooperation in getting the Jews out of Austria as quickly
as possible", and that emigration "was proceeding at much
too slow a rate" was very definite and unmistakable.
(End note 20: CON-48, Jaretzki report, 7/3/38 [3 July
1938])
-----
According to Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) between 1938 and
1939 there were about 50% of the Austrian Jews emigrating:
<1938 until the outbreak of World War II in September
1939, about one-half of Austrian Jewry succeeded in
leaving the country, many of them for Palestine, mostly by
"illegal" routes.>
