The Jews of Nazi Vienna, 1938-1945

"In her groundbreaking study, Offenberger tells the history of the Jews of Vienna (who accounted for 90 percent of all Austrian Jews) as they negotiated and endured the onslaught of Nazi policy after the Anschluss. Showing how the mechanism for emigration shaded into a machinery for deportation, she keeps our focus on the Jews, on individual and communal decisions and choices." (Deborah Dwork, Clark University, USA) "Offenberger reconstructs the everyday life of Viennese Jews after the Nazi takeover of Austria by raising a much larger question of if and how the descendants of genocide victims can overcome the suffering of a permanent loss." (Katerina Kralova, Charles University, Czech Republic) "Dr. Offenberger is very skilled at putting the reader into the position of the Jews of Vienna and asking the key questions: what were they thinking, what could they have done, that is, what would you have done?" (Martin Dean, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, USA)

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.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.