Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Siegel
Can you please expand on this? I am very curious about it. I saw nothing in my visits to Austria (or, for that matter, Germany) that suggested that either country would be susceptible to popularly supported takeover by a mass murderer. That part of the world seems well educated, musically and literarily sophisticated, and very prosperous.
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You're totally right, they are sophisticated and involved in a very active music and literary culture, there are concerns, balls, all sorts of museums, the Opera scene is extremely active. But being highly cultured and prosperous doesn't preclude supporting mass murder. Many of the Nazis who were the vary creators of the Holocaust were prosperous and cultured.
These are the threads that I felt were direct links to the conditions/behaviors that lead to the Holocaust:
1. Older people in Austria (those born in 1910 or earlier) often spoke about how life was better in two periods -- when Austria had an Empire (pre-1918) and when Hitler was in power. There is a very common belief that their Empire was taken from them when outside forces encouraged all the different ethnic groups to split into Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. An outside force took their country from them, and spit it up, to the detriment of their daily lives. It's a very common belief that democracy or living in a republic is a very second-rate way to live -- much better to have a strong leader, who can really make a difference. Very common to be sitting on the bus and overhear two old ladies discussing how "Hitler would never have approved of......" Or "before the War that never would have been tolerated......"
Perhaps it's just me, but my experience of the US is that we believe that ordinary people are capable of running local government, state government. That even the people who are elected to Congress aren't necessarily a different category or more worthy people, or more able to run things. There's an independence of thought, a feeling that "we can work disputes out ourselves, we don't have to involve the police or an authority in every misunderstanding."
2. In the US, a lot of the less desirable jobs are taken by undocumented people -- migrant farm worker, restaurant workers, dish washer, hotel maid, etc. In Austria, Turkish "guest workers" hold those positions. Listening to the Austrians talk amoungst themselves about guest workers, they talked about them as "mongrels," or "subhumans" -- some of the same language that was used to talk about Jewish people, gypsies, etc. the people that were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust. I worked as a housekeeper for a Viennese family, and the mother of that family sat down one day and discussed all the different racial groups in the world, and ranked each one, using the same terminology she learned in school. She graduated from high school in 1943. She showed me her high school diploma, which had a border decorated with 16 swastikas. That was when I started to realize that education of children can totally shape the next generation. The Nazis may have lost the war, but it took long enough that many children got years of education in a Nazi-controlled school systems.
3. She also explained to me that Europeans (or at least the Viennese), look down on Americans in general BECAUSE we are the descendants of people who left Europe and other countries because they were criminals or couldn't cut it in Europe. Turned that whole "melting pot" theory on it's head -- she told me that it's "mongelization" when people from different countries married and since all the Americans are a mixed up mess of heritage, we're all inherently weaker, genetically and intellectually. Mind you, I had told her nothing about my immigrant grandparents, etc.
4. I really enjoy learning about history, and one of the things I do everywhere is go to museums. In Austria, at that time, all the history museums would skip over WW II and the post-war occupation. Vienna was occupied by the Allies for 10 years after the war. At the historical museum of the City of Vienna, there was a timeline on the wall, and it marked important events in Austrian history. When you get to the 1930s, it marked the Anschluss when Hitler annexed Austria to Germany (1938), and then the next event on the timeline was 1955, the founding of the Republic of Austria. There was a laser light show that was projected onto the facade of the Belevedere Palace, based on the various important events in Austrian history. Same deal -- 1938, Anschluss, 1955, founding of Austrian Republic. If there was an opportunity to ask someone about World War II, they would look blankly at me and say, literally, in almost identical words "Well, what could we do? Austria was occupied by the Germans, just like France." Personally, I'd already seen the newsreel footage of Hitler's entry into an adoring Vienna. Contrast that to the Nazis parading through the Arc de Triomphe with no spectators at all, it's a very different story.
5. I didn't have the money to travel to any of the concentration camps in Austria to see how they discussed that history, which I really regret. When I traveled through Czechosolovakia, East Germany, West Germany and Poland, I did visit camps, and saw extremely different levels of engagement with this difficult history. It's fascinating the way that each country would depict this, but that's a thread for a different forum.
4. When one reads Holocaust literature, one of the recurring themes is fear that the neighbors would turn someone into the police. During my year in Austria, I found that much more likely to happen than when I was living in the US. In the US, if a neighbor has something to say, they often say it to your face, or discuss it with other neighbors behind your back, and you hear about it when the gossip gets back to you. In Austria, they are quick to involve the police, often without any attempt to handle a dispute privately. Here are some examples:
a. My boyfriend (an American working for an international company in Vienna) was parrallel parking his car. I was with him. He backed up, and his bumper touched the car parked behind that spot. Did not damage the car, didn't hit it, the car didn't rock back on it's brakes. Just tapped the bumper, as I've done a million times when parrallel parking. He then pulled forward, parked the car and we got out. As were starting to walk away, a bystander approached with a policeman in tow. He had seen us parking, saw the two cars touch, and immediately involved the police. The policeman insisted that we put a note on the windshield of the car parked behind our car, so that they could file an insurance claim. We thought it ridiculous, but did it. Then the policeman decided that wasn't enough, and was trying to decide whether to give us a ticket for the "accident" or arrest my boyfriend. Several bystanders (none of whom owned the car parked behind ours) gathered and added their opinions about whether we should be ticketed or arrested. Finally, the owner of the other car came out, looked at his car, looked at our car, and told the policeman that he wouldn't be filing an insurance claim and that he didn't think there was any damage done. We got the guy's name and contact information and felt it was best to leave at that point. He was leaving, and was the only one not interested in either getting us a ticket or arrested.
b. After I left the employment of the Viennese family, I moved in with a couple with whom I'd become friendly. She was Viennese, he was American, they'd met and fallen in love in the States, and now he had moved to Austria to live with her. They let me move into their spare room. They were just getting started, I contributed to the rent, and kept house for them -- did the shopping, cleaning and cooking. They lived in a sublet and the owner wanted it back, so we had to move. They found another apartment, but we didn't have enough money to hire professional movers. Another friend's father had a small furniture store, and he said if we moved on a Sunday, we could use one of his small delivery trucks to move. We put out the word, and got seven friends together, loaded the truck and drove to the new apartment. The new apartment was a fourth floor walk-up, so unloading took longer than loading. We'd gotten the first load up to the new location, when the police showed up. The neighbors had called them because a) we clearly weren't unionized movers; b) were moving on Sunday; c) were using a truck that clearly wasn't a moving truck. We got three tickets for doing this -- the one for the truck was waived by the judge, because the owner of the truck showed up in court and testified that he'd given us permission to use his truck. There was never a question of us stealing the truck -- the issue was that it was a non-approved moving truck. What we moved was two beds, a kitchen table, a dresser and about 20 boxes of clothing, books and dishes.
c. I worked part-time taking care of children. There is a large international community in Vienna, largely because there is a UN office there. The Viennese will not allow their children to babysit, because that means your children are servants of someone. There were a lot of young families of the English-speaking staff at the UN or the various embassies (US, Canadian, Australian, etc.) who were struggling with child care, both for after school and in the evenings. I put out the word that I was an American expat, had extensive childcare experience, and could work mornings, afternoons and evenings. One afternoon I was taking care of two little boys -- a five year old and his seven year old brother. Their apartment building was built around a court yard that had been landscaped, and had a grass lawn in the center. We took a soccer ball down and were throwing the ball to each other. What I hadn't realized was that a) from noon to four was the "quiet hour" at their building, when a lot of the elderly took naps; b) ball playing was not an acceptable activity in their building's courtyard. So one of the neighbors called the police. In the US, a dispute like this would be handled privately -- the neighbor would have come down to say something to me, or would have called the parents that evening to complain, or might have complained to the building manager, who would get in touch with the parents. When the policeman showed up, and explained the situation, I immediately apologized, and said we'd go in and play inside. In the US, that would have been enough. The Austrian policeman said that wasn't acceptable, there would be a fine involved, and that we'd have to go to the police station until one of the parents could come collect us. So they loaded us up, and took us to the police station. We were there for about three hours until the father came home from work, he had to pay a fine. We weren't put in a cell, but we were locked in a room. We could see through the room's window into the police station, so I got the boys interested in trying to figure out what the various policemen were doing. I kept thinking about how differently this whole experience would have been for them if it had been an American policeman who was called to break up a game of catch.
The yearning for a "strong man" to "take the country in hand" and direct it in the right way. Not dealing with the responsibility for their role in the Holocaust ("We were occupied, like France"). The belief that you don't address a dispute directly, person to person, but immediately involve the police in the smallest problems. The racial hierarchy that (at least some of ) the Viennese still buy into, and the idea that are "pure" people who can be "tainted" by intermarriage. These are the remnants of belief and behavior that I feel were directly tied to the Holocaust.
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