Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

The Jews of Nazi Vienna, 1938-1945

Rescue and Destruction

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Ilana Fritz Offenberger

    1. University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Dartmouth, USA

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Uses the voices of the individuals and families who lived during this time and new archival documentation to reconstruct the daily lives of Vienna’s Jews
  • Creates a vivid picture of the co-dependent relationship this community developed with their German masters
  • Focuses on the early stages of the genocide and emphasizes that the destruction of the Jews did not begin in the death camps but ended there

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide (PSHG)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 24.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 32.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. From the Opera to the Streets

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 1-29

  3. The Anschluss Pogrom: Panic, Chaos, and Confusion for Vienna’s Jews in March 1938

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 31-67

  4. The IKG: Co-opted by the New Masters

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 69-98

  5. Turning Point: From Vienna to Dachau

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 99-127

  6. Rescue and Destruction: Daily Life During a Mass Exodus

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 129-171

  7. November Complications, but Emigration Continues

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 173-209

  8. Transition to Deportation, 1941

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 211-246

  9. Caught in the Vicious Cycle: From a Working Jewish Community to a Council of Jewish Elders

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 247-291

  10. Epilogue: Going “Home”? The Aftermath of the Holocaust for the Jewish Community of Vienna

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages 293-305

  11. Erratum to: The IKG: Co-opted by the New Masters

    • Ilana Fritz Offenberger
    Pages E1-E1

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 307-321
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

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. Thisis not a triumphant history. Although the overwhelming majority survived the Holocaust, the Jewish community that once existed was destroyed.

Reviews

“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.” (Debórah 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.” (Kateřina Králová, 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)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Dartmouth, USA

    Ilana Fritz Offenberger

About the author

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.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation