I am
trying hard not to stereotype people, events or countries. But I have emotions
and for now it is difficult not to make some generalisations triggered off by
this special, to me, book The Hare with Amber Eyes. The thoughts and emotions are
about Austria and the Austrians.
My
knowledge about the country was never deep. Now, I discovered few more things,
but I still know very little about it. For many years, it has been a country of
Strauss and waltzes, Sacher torte, Saltzburger Nockerl, Mozart and Vienna the
town from where my engagement and wedding rings came from. It was difficult not
to be sentimental about the whole Austria and loved it.
I
knew about Anschluss and I thought, poor Austrians, they suffered so. I thought
that it was some common denominator between Poland and Austria. Not really.
Hardy anybody in Poland welcomed Nazis.
Many Austrians, however, did welcome them with open arms and voluntarily
enlisted in Hitler army and organisations.
Was
Ted, one of my Austrian colleagues from IBM, one of them? I met this older,
nervy person in my first days in Australia. His behaviour was strange, but for
me at that time so many things were new and seemed strange. I noticed his shaking
hands and shifty gaze. It took a while before he decided to unburden himself
and confess that he was flying over Poland in bomber planes dropping those
bombes that destroyed Polish towns and killed Polish people. He was conscripted
by force, of course, but was force really applied? This I will never know, but now
I ponder over Ted’s decision and motivations. It must have been rather
difficult for him to meet a Pole so many years after the horrible events. He
must have been a very young person, but my compassion for him diminished with
my increasing knowledge of the times and Austrian eagerness to join their
oppressors.
There
were many Jews in Austria, influential, wealthy people. People of the banks and
lovers of fine arts. Their homes were full of museum pieces. They appreciated beauty
of their possessions and they had means to acquire them. When in March 1938Anschluss of Austria happened, there were still many Jews in Europe. They were
people who could not believe in reality of anti-Jewish proclamations of Hitler.
Such is the power of hope that humanity will prevail. Most of the ones who
could not believe that the world will change that much finished their life in
concentration camps.
All
Jewish possessions in Vienna had to be taken care of. Germans are a very
methodical and practical people (forgive my generalisation). In my mind, this
is actually a positive characteristic, but this time it was applied in a frightening
way. In Vienna after the Anschluss both Germans and Austrians approached the
issue of the valuable Jewish possessions openly, publicly and legally. The
registers were created methodically dividing the items according to their fiscal
and museum value into groups: Hitler’s personal, German Reich, Austria and the
least valuable ones for sale at public auctions at Dorotheum. It was all legal,
so if any of the original owners would survive a holocaust and saw his old possessions
in a home of a respectable Austrian he would know that his host is a rightful
owner of say, a portrait of the Jewish grandmother of the guest. So is the Austrian
state the rightful owner of many Jewish treasures. Let’s take The Woman inGold. The film told us the story about a very determined lawyer and a woman
with a lot of chutzpah to recover the family heirloom from the very reluctant
Austrian State to return to the rightful owner what was really taken from them
by force. How many such things Austria calls their own and proudly displays in
Kunsthistorishes Museum, Leopold Museum, Albertina or Museum of Applied Arts
and others?
Suddenly
my desire to go to Vienna and visit its museums and art galleries diminished considerably.
