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ZAKHORIUM

Date

1933CE

1933–1938

The seizure of firms and, in 1938, the annexation of Austria hastened Jewish ruin.

Social and economic historyAntisemitism and persecution52.5238°N 13.3996°E
1950
The Holocaust: each bar is an event of the period; this one is in coral.

Sourced narrative

Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.

9 statements

01Evidence and context

01

Before 1938 ended, some 60 to 70 percent of firms owned by Jews had shut or passed into Aryan hands, first under pressure called voluntary, then by forced transfer.

03

Götz Aly argues that racial plunder funded unprecedented economic equality and upward mobility, making the regime both popular and criminal.

02

On 12 March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria, and about 190,000 more Jews fell under Nazi rule.

04

In Vienna, Jews were forced to scrub cobblestones while crowds taunted them.

05

Sigmund Freud was watched, questioned, and robbed, but celebrity spared him from kneeling; he left on 4 June 1938 with his wife and daughter.

06

Freud added a sarcastic line to the exit paper: he could most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.

07

Within 18 months, five hundred bureaucrats told Himmler that de-Judaizing the Austrian economy was practically complete.

08

On 20 August 1938 Adolf Eichmann opened Vienna's Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which forced out 110,000 Jews by June 1939.

09

By the end of 1938, 44,000 of 70,000 Jewish-owned apartments in Vienna had been taken by gentiles.

Context

03

Götz Aly argues that racial plunder funded unprecedented economic equality and upward mobility, making the regime both popular and criminal.

04

In Vienna, Jews were forced to scrub cobblestones while crowds taunted them.

05

Sigmund Freud was watched, questioned, and robbed, but celebrity spared him from kneeling; he left on 4 June 1938 with his wife and daughter.

§ 01Geography

Where it happened

Gazetteer coordinates (Pleiades for ancient places; Natural Earth and Wikidata for modern ones) over modern physical geography (Natural Earth). Coastlines and the Dead Sea have changed since antiquity.
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§ 04Network

Connections

    § 05Bibliography

    Further reading

    • Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939 (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).

      The years of persecution · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 457

    § 06Apparatus

    Sources on this page

    1. 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 429inspect
    2. 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 429inspect
    3. 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 429inspect
    4. 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    5. 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    6. 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    7. 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    8. 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    9. 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
    • Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
    • Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
    • Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
    • Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
    • Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.