The Jews of Nazi Vienna, 1938-1945

This book examines Jewish life in Vienna just after the Nazi-takeover in 1938. Who were Vienna's Jews, how did they react and respond to Nazism, and why? Drawing upon the voices of the individuals and families who lived during this time, together with new archival documentation, Ilana Offenberger reconstructs the daily lives of Vienna's Jews from Anschluss in March 1938 through the entire Nazi occupation and the eventual dissolution of the Jewish community of Vienna. Offenberger explains how and why over two-thirds of the Jewish community emigrated from the country, while one-third remained trapped. A vivid picture emerges of the co-dependent relationship this community developed with their German masters, and the false hope they maintained until the bitter end. The Germans murdered close to one third of Vienna's Jewish population in the "final solution" and their family members who escaped the Reich before 1941 chose never to return; they remained dispersed across the world. This is not a triumphant history. Although the overwhelming majority survived the Holocaust, the Jewish community that once existed was destroyed.

Ilana F. Offenberger is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA. Her early research on Viennese Jewry was awarded the first annual Radomir Luza Prize for an outstanding work in Austrian and/or Czechoslovak history in 2012.

List of Figures.- List of Tables.- Introduction.- Chapter 1: From the Opera to the Streets.- Chapter 2: The Anschluss Pogrom: Panic, Chaos, and Confusion for Vienna's Jews in March 1938.- Chapter 3: The IKG: Co-opted by the New Masters.- Chapter 4: Turning Point: Vienna to Dachau.- Chapter 5: Rescue and Destruction: Daily Life during a Mass Exodus.- Chapter 6: Escape! November Complications, but Emigration Continues.- Chapter 7: Transition to Deportation, 1941.- Chapter 8: Caught in the Vicious Cycle: From a Working Jewish Community to a Council of Jewish Elders.- Chapter 9: Epilogue. Going Home: The Aftermath of the Holocaust for the Jewish Community.- Bibliography.- Index.