Survival of a Peculiar Remnant: The Jewish Population of Vienna During the Last Years of the War

Abstract

In my paper I will focus on the last years of the Nazi regime after the conclusion of mass deportations in the fall of 1942 in Vienna. This period has often been neglected in historic research of Jewish life in Austria during the Nazi regime, since it was indeed a very peculiar remnant of the Jewish population that was able to remain in Vienna under precarious circumstances. Most of these people defined Jewish by Nazi laws were living in so called ‘mixed marriages' with a non-Jewish (‘Aryan') partner or were protected by an ‘Aryan' parent. Since Jews were not allowed to be treated in hospitals nor to be accommodated in old-age homes, a small fragment of the Jewish population was able to remain in Vienna without the protection of an ‘Aryan' family member, working in the remaining institutions of the former Jewish community. After the deportation of the majority of the Austrian Jewish population, the Jewish community in Vienna was officially dissolved and reorganized as so-called ‘Council of elders' in November of 1942. It was put in charge of all people defined Jewish by Nazi racial laws independent of their religious denominations. The paper will examine the ‘peculiarities' of this hybrid community, the interactions between its different members and their coping strategies in the face of growing persecution and the threat of impending deportation. It will further analyze how the arrival of Hungarian Jewish forced laborers in the summer of 1944 dramatically changed the demography of the Jewish population in Vienna once again. Although both groups hardly interacted with each other and their narratives of survival and solidarity within the city differed greatly, for neither of them survival until the end of the war was guaranteed.