The immigration documents of the Austrian Jews went online - and revealed the escape attempt of the community

The hundreds of thousands of documents in the database record profiles of members of the Jewish community in Austria in the period between the world wars.

Among the details in the huge archive that has become digital: names, ages and photos.

"Make it possible to tell the story, complete the history of the families and add another piece to the puzzle"

Eli Ashkenazi

12/08/2022

Friday, August 12, 2022, 1:24 p.m. Updated: 2:40 p.m.

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In 1938, when he was seven years old, Shaul Spielman was expelled from the school he attended in Vienna, the capital of Austria.

In those days his father was also fired from his job, and the family's apartment and the grocery store it owned were confiscated by the Germans who annexed Austria, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Austrian people.

Many Jews then left Austria, their homeland.

The Spielman family was among the families that remained.

Over the years Shaul was convinced that his family remained in Austria because his paternal grandfather was ill and could not leave his home.

However, he was recently exposed to documentation that shows that his father actually tried to evacuate the family outside the borders of Austria - as quickly as possible.

These are immigration documents that his father filled out and in which he wrote the names of the family members.

To the question written on the form by the German government - if everyone intends to emigrate from the country now or if they might want to do so in the future, the unequivocal answer is that everyone wants to emigrate without delay.

The Nazi occupation of Vienna (photo: official website, Jewish People Archives, National Library)

Spielman was recently exposed to documents filled 84 years ago following a joint venture between the MyHeritage company and the National Library.

As part of the project, a huge collection of documents from the archives of the Jewish community in Vienna was digitized.

The collection includes application forms submitted by Jews from Vienna in the period between the two world wars.

Many of them were filled in the years 1938-1939.

The collection contains 228,250 records and also includes scanned images of the original documents.

According to Dr. Yohai Ben Gedaliah, director of the Jewish People's Archives at the National Library, "There is something interesting in these documents.

These are documents that are actually something from a bureaucracy system, but they actually tell a story.

You see here a process that suddenly happens, how at once so many Jews filled out forms in the hope of leaving Austria.

In Germany this process is slow and here it happens suddenly."

Ben Gedaliah further explains that from the vast amounts of information it is possible to learn many details such as the countries of birth of those Jews, or the professional experience and occupational profile of the people filling out the forms.

It is also possible to learn about the connections that the Jews of Vienna had with acquaintances or relatives from other countries.

"We see requests to immigrate to France or Poland for example," he said.

"Which of them thought that in the future Paris would be under Nazi occupation?"

The Nazi occupation of Vienna (photo: official website, Jewish People Archives, National Library)

From those documents with apparently dry information, he learns, for example, about "great desperation".

According to him, "to the question that appears in the documents when they want to leave the country, many answered that they want to leave as soon as possible."

Creating such a large data index and connecting it to MyHeritage's vast databases allows cross-referencing with the many data already in the company's databases.

By cross-referencing the data and connecting them, information gaps and gaps in family history can be completed and branches of family trees that lacked information to connect them can be merged.

"The Holocaust of the Jewish people is a black hole and large voids were created in it that are difficult to restore. It is clear that there will be parts that we will never be able to restore, but by making the 'Austrian Collection' accessible we are able to complete part of the huge puzzle," said Roi Mandel from the MyHeritage company.

The Nazi occupation of Vienna (photo: official website, Jewish People Archives, National Library)

Cruelly, the same large database that originated in an attempt to escape and open a new chapter in life, was later used by the Nazi oppressor.

They already had an organized stockpile that was used by the Nazi administration.

The one who was at the head of this malicious mechanism was Adolf Eichmann.

After the "Anschluss", the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, he was sent to Vienna and appointed to the position of head of the Jewish department in Austria.

In this position he founded the Bureau of Jewish Immigration.

After the apparatus led by him instilled terror and fear and dropped the economic base from under the feet of the Jews, he left them only one choice - to ask to leave their country when they were destitute.

Of course, the fate of those who remained was worse.

The Spielman family, for example, was deported in September 1942 to a Jewish school that was converted into a prison, from where they were sent to the Terezin ghetto, where his mother died of typhus a short time later.

In one of Mangala's selections Shaul was sent to the gas chambers, but his father, who worked in the ghetto administration, saw his name on the list, transferred him to the list of boys who were transferred to a labor camp - and saved his son's life.

Years later, when Shaul was already in Israel, a message was sent to him from the Jewish community in Vienna where they informed him that his father had perished on February 22, 1945 in Dachau.

Shaul was released by the American army in the Gunskirchen camp when he was sick with typhus.

After he recovered, he immigrated to Palestine and volunteered for the Palmach. He fought and was wounded in the War of Independence, and then participated in all of Israel's wars until the Yom Kippur War. Shaul married Miriam, the two started a family, and today they have 18 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren

. Also to learn about the rapid integration and contribution of those who came from Austria to Palestine. For example, the immigration forms of Ehud Abriel appear there. Abriel was a key activist in the Hagana and was involved a lot after World War II in the organization of immigration to the Land of Israel and in the purchase of weapons and equipment for the Hagana and the IDF in the War of Independence.

Later he became a member of the Knesset on behalf of Mapai, served as ambassador and chairman of the Zionist Organization.

Avriel, who was born Georg Uiberall in 1917 in Vienna, Austria, was active in Jewish youth movements in the country and at the age of 21 became the director of the Youth Aliyah Institute.

After the Nazi takeover of Austria, he was involved in smuggling Jews from Austria.

In 1939, before the Second World War broke out, he managed to leave the gates of Austria and arrived in Israel.

In Avriel's immigration forms there is a signed document from the Palestinian embassy, ​​which was located on Marc Aurel Street in Vienna.

According to the document, Avriel is headed to the port of Haifa in Palestine, where he will arrive on a ship that will leave on February 12, 1939, seven months before the outbreak of war.

The documents of another highly privileged figure in Israel's security system were also found in the large database of forms;

This is Dan Lener, one of the commanders of the Palmach and a former general in the IDF, who was also one of the paratroopers of the Jewish settlement before the establishment of the state.

He was born Ernst Linner, was a member of the youth organization in Lau Weiss and after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, fled the country at the last moment.

In 1941 he volunteered for the Palmach and was recruited into the German Department - a special department that was established in the days when it seemed that the Nazis were planning to conquer the Land of Israel, and was supposed to be used as a guerilla force that would disrupt the enemy's operations - beyond enemy lines.

In the immigration document, Lenner was asked where he intended to leave, and he replied that he was interested To immigrate to an English-speaking country. Regarding his plans, Lener explained that he is in excellent physical condition, that he is a scholar, speaks English and German, and that he is interested in working as a farmer or as a tailor, a profession he studied in Vienna.

He did fulfill his dream and became a farmer in his kibbutz, Neot Mordechai, but most of his years he was a military man, reaching the rank of colonel and at the age of 51, as commander of a reserve division, he stood with his soldiers in battles to contain the Syrian army in the center of the Golan Heights and later in the transition to attack into Syrian territory.

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