[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.>
