the armenian genocide he has a masters of green from harvard university and he is also a fine arts photographer he currently works izzy education cord nadir for hand in plastic surgery at beth israel thank you diane thank you belmont media center and thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming to this talk this is not an easy talk to hear it's not an easy talk to give it's a journey it's a journey wh started for me on this talk probably about a year and a half ago and the title of the talk is the search for prisoner one thousand and two and austrian experience of the holocaust now what is my own relationship to austria and to vienna well my own relationship probably began with my grandparents and these are these are my grandparents anton and gertrude meyer brommer and anton actually came from the austrian one gerry an employer brown in the late eighteenth eighties and gertrude's parents came from bohemia so they were both their families both came from the austrian and you're an empire now my grandfather later became a world thousand and two prisoner one thousand and two is a man named richard brahma which is the same name as my last name i found him about a year and a half ago in the yard of the sham central database for victims of the holocaust i have very little information about him initially he was born in vienna on january twenty ninth one thousand nine hundred three and he was actually transported twice  from vienna the first time very early in october twenty sixth one nine hundred thirty nine and later in a second transport in which he becomes a prisoner one thousand into out of a deportation train of one thousand and four and he goes to kills poland this talk in many ways raises more questions that it's still not done it's a journey of mine just as it in some ways you're going to be following the journey of richard brahma who he was and what happens to but in my research one of the things i first tried to do is that all of us are born dot of a context none of us chose who we were born to where we were born we could all be you have born in austria at this time or we could have been born in somalia whatever we don't choose who we are and michel when we're born where we're born our income class we're just born but in order to understand people's choices in their lives you have to understand their context so what i learned in this in this journey was that austrian vienna is in some ways becomes the model for the holocaust in the final solution it's the first country that the nazis and then or take over and in that in that takeover they begin to formulate what later occurs three four and five years and from their constitution and eight hundred sixty seven it reads all ethnic groups in the nation and each ethnic group has an inalienable right to preserve and cultivate its nationality and language the austrian hungary an empire was quite progressive for its time and many jews thought this was wonderful because it gave them an opportunity an opportunity to rise economically professionally and also and in other ways now what was also the time it was a time of new music like here we have gustaf mahler he came to vienna from bohemia and his family came from bohemia and then in in eight hundred ninety seven he becomes the director of the vienna opera where he's there for ten years but in order to become the director he had to convert to catholicism so all once even though things are progressive things are still not totally right you just couldn't always be who you wanted to be or what you were to begin with it's also the time of a lot of immigration from czechoslovakia or bohemia i guess it would be call at the time and vienna was a place of new music under  new art under people like gustaf clamped and we were all very familiar with this particular image and they start a whole new movement of art called the succession movement it was also the time of sigmund freud new understanding of sexuality of the human subconscious of the human mind and ultimately humanity itself so all of this was happening in vienna at the time now here's a quote i found in my research whoever denies the right to my german homeland denies me the right to my thoughts my feelings the language i speak the air i breathe hence i must protect myself from him as if he were a murderer this is a very powerful statement and you might think that it was stated by nazis when in reality it were words by jews and the first the quote was actually from a jewish man named gabriel reiser and he was an advocate for jersey jewish and germany mancipation in the first half of the nineteenth century and it would be quoted the same year that richard brommer was born by martin mendelsohn who was the first german press german jewish president of the central union of german citizens jewish faith at their annual meeting now why was this so important because to jews they wanted many of them wanted to assimulate many of them wanted to be german and many of them wanted to be austrian in some ways many of them were more todd to the german culture than sometimes even their own jewish traditions and so that's one of the things that's happening but at the same time there is an undercurrent a negative undercurrent that's also taking place in europe and really across the world at the same time and this is a new racial and political anti semitism this is a cartoon from austria in eight hundred seventy three which shows kind of a character of a jewish man probably trying to seduce a young woman and this is a an eight hundred eighty nine paris selection pamphlet or poster which also represented french anti some semitism jews are a different race hostile to our own so anti semitism by the end of the nineteenth century is beginning to link in into the political campaigns into political posters and into cartoons newspapers etc now one of the people who is watching this isn't a simulated june who was born in budapest but educated in vienna named theodore assimulate he tried to assimilate he even tried to join arion clubs and was sometimes kicked out of them and and jews at the time had different responses to this anti semitism one is well we're just try to use the legal the legal resources to protect ourselves others say if you just hold on and just go away it's getting better than what it used to be and then others and this was his response is maybe it's never going to be good for us in europe and we have to leave he was particularly brought to this conclusion because he was a newspaper writer in france in paris and he saw the trial of l for dreyfus a french jewish artillery officer who at the time was declared to be a and he was tried he was convicted and he was sentenced to prison and he would be there approximately ten years and would hurt so as reporting on this he he makes the decision that there has to be another place for jews because we're never going we're never going to be accepted in europe and so we must begin to find a home for ourselves and he didn't know where that home was some people thought palestine other people would uganda other people would say different feelings but this is kind of the beginning in some ways what will later become the nation of his you know this is a photograph from one nine hundred fifteen in primarily th primary jewish area of vienna called leo post op and it was in the second district and what you have here is a is you can even see from this photograph you have orthodox jews but you also have men in business suit people like sigmund freud and others so the jewish community itself was very diverse from the religious the orthodox religious to communists to socialist that some of the jews were the head of the socialist party vienna at the time so again it is it's banned the whole political spectrum now this is a very important matter because the large map the map is the whole is the austria hungary empire the world that my grandfather was born into and that richard brommer was born into it was multi racial it was multinational it was multicultural and you can just see that right there it was an empire but after world war one it is can dance to this little nation that we now call austria and so think about it you were once an empire and now you're small and the other  part of this this this map is these lines and what are these lines they're showing a lot of people it says right down here at the bottom migration of workers to vienna before one thousand nine hundred where  coming from coming from bohemia more revell they're coming from the russian empire where there's pog roams and other things that are taking place and they all want to move in to what they consider the more progressive austria hungary an empire they also want to move to the big cities because industries be an established their new professions are being established there and there's jobs not the jewish presence in vienna really began around eleven ninety four  hundred fifty seven there were about twenty seven hundred jews in vienna by nine thousand nine hundred that number had grown to one hundred forty seven thousand and think about that in fifty years time it totally expanded in a in a great great great manner and then the point is but you're also getting people coming from czechoslovakia or bohemia who are jewish so what's happening is you're getting thousands of people coming into vienna but then what happens is what do you do with these people is it going to create ethnic conflict within that within that culture and those are the things that began to happen and this is shown by this cartoon this is nineteen ten after the census the overpowering checks in jews versus the norm like german global fritz this is the german speaking the little guy over here i got to be careful now otherwise those two will become taller than me and what you have is you have three main areas kind of vying for political power within that within vienna itself even though jews are only about eleven percent of the population you have the germans and some of them will later be called hand germans because they want to german empire you have you have the czechs you have jews and then you also have a many many many that would join kind of the catholic church and their kind of part of the middle that can go left or right depend not this is a baby you might think it's richard brahma but i have no photos of rich it's a person who's very very famous and we oftentimes forget that even the famous we're one times baby who is this man this man is adolf hitler and this baby is eight off hitler and he was also born right on the edge between the germany and the austrian hungary an empire kind of in an area of bavaria but also right by austria and this is him in one nine hundred twenty seven he's been imprisoned as a revolutionary because he tried to create a revolution in munich that failed and he was in prison and when he was in that prison he wrote his famous book called or infamous book called mind calm and this is what i found in it recently the german of my youth was the dialect of lower varia i could neither forget it nor learn the viennese jargon i was repealed by the conglomeration of races which the capital showed me repelled by the this whole mixture young man he remembered he went to vienna and he wanted to become a painter and an architect and he wasn't successful and but he was watching and reading the newspapers and in some ways he reflects the social turmoil and tension that was taking place in vienna at the time and he also came and the other thing i find interesting about this quote he doesn't like diversity he doesn't like cosmopolitanism he remembers his german from mine com this is him in one nine hundred twenty eight the rise of the nazis in germany and this is from the chapter one second paragraph german austria must return to the great german mother country one blood demands one right never will the german nation possess the moral right to engage in colonial politics until at least it embraces its own sons with a state hitler had t view is remember the austrian employer is broken there's a lot of germans within that imply or after world war one and what he wants to do is unite germany with the former employer making it a hand german and he's not a long there's a lot of other people who want the same thing this is the jewish population when hitler came to power and became the chancellor of germany germany in january of one nine hundred thirty three and the largest number of june of any city in europe is vienna of one hundred seventy eight thousand by the time most of this talk takes place really around one thousand thirty eight to kind of the end of the war there's about two hundred thousand austrian jews in in in austria itself massed in vienna and think about that and in that kind of becomes my basic numbers because at the end of this talk i report on the numbers what happens to the two hundred thousand and that's kind of the basic number that i that i start with now if we can look comes to power in one nine hundred thirty three but all was not well in austria either and it was a fractured political system where the laugh did not work with the right the right would be always challenging the left and they were both vying for the middle the man in the middle was a christian socialist linked up with the catholic church you kind of see across right here linked up with the vast majority which was the catholic church and he was in some ways trying to create a coalition which would maintain social polity there was a civil war in hundred thirty four and it was the left against the middle and the left was crushed that means the social democrats here they were workers they were socialists they were communists they lose that civil war at the same time however the right is empowered and you have the right over here what ultimately happens is the right assassinates dolphin us on july one nine hundred thirty four it's one of the first crises for made adolf hitler politically because the question is should he go into austria at that time remember he wants to reclaim austria but he wasn't able to because he wasn't poller awful enough he did not he had not yet consolidated his power in germany and secondly the need to almost a leaning who's on the lower part of austria i would not allow him to come in and at that time mussolini was more powerful than hitler so he backed off but what happens is is the in many ways the nazis go underground in austria the man who takes over from dolphus is a man named kurt von shushan egg and he's the leader of that middle party the christian socialist party that was somewhat based almost on a mussolini model it was kind of fastest in a way you notice again the crosses you notice jesus on the cross and you know to shoot snake almost given like a hitler salute now at the same time that plan german group movement both within austria and within germany start to become stronger and stronger and this is from austria itself hitler our last therefore come to us so germany is getting stronger they're getting more jobs they're being anti semitic to jews they're building a military and austria is kind of looking across the way there and they're saying we kind of want what germany had because they were part of the depression they didn't have jobs and they said we need to do something new it all comes to a head beginning in february of one nine hundred thirty eight and ultimately moving to this photograph in march ninth of  cooked on shoe snake was called by hitler to come to germany and they wanted to create a stronger alliance hitler took him into his like castle for almost a weekend herb out three or four days and he more or less verbal e abused him intimidated him brought in generals and others and say austria should be open to the nazis they should be part of the parliament they should be be all let out of jail and they should be on nazi propaganda should be allowed everywhere in austria should snigs said yes because he probably wasn't going to get out of the castle in letty's unless he said yes but what occurs is when he goes back to austria he begins to rethink it and he said well instead of me to society why don't we let the people decide so he decides to have a vote a public vote nationwide in which the people themselves will vote are we going to be align ourselves with germany or are we not it creates a crisis and within the next three days germany will take over austria horror books have been written on it but it happens very very quickly because hitler feels that he was betrayed any more or less begins the threats ok you didn't listen and he was really afraid that the austrians would vote against the union of germany we have to stop it this is where we come to the network starting to form for the final solution in a new and insidious kind of ways here are the three kind of instigators of the annexation or the on solution are the five instigators primarily annexation of the of austria in the middle of course is it off hitler on the top is the head of the five year plan and also the head of the german air force herman gehring down here in your lower left is a man named called arthur sues in guar he's an attorney and he's a member of the austrian parliament he's the inside man and he later for a very brief time becomes the head of the government for two or three ok and then over here on the right is also a member of the nazi party a police officer in his name is a dillo glob now why these people are important is they all become affiliated with the final solution he later becomes the head of the netherlands and will be executed at nuremberg for war crimes against the dutch he will also be the before that he will also be appointed second in command when they first occupied poland glob nick will become the head of the gestapo in the s s involved with the creation and the implementation of all the extermination camps in poland and gehring would also be one who is responsible for changing things so that the final solution began they begin to kind of work together in new ways as it relates to austria by march twelfth three days later the annexation begins and this is the austrian border guards opening the way for the german army and this is the german army marching into austria hitler was met with great love and enthusiasm where ever he went and here are some examples of that and he would write i have in the course of my struggle won much love for my people but when i crossed the former frontier there met me such a stream of love as i have never experienced and were ever he went crowds gathered to greet him and to praise him and to he was like a rock star only with with rifles and tanks and guns and one german would call it the blossom camp why was that he said i want to make sure that all my soldiers wear goggles why because i want to protect their eyes from the flowers that the people are going to throw at them as they marched on the roads and so we called it the blossom kim the vienna boys choir we sing for adolph hitler by the second day of the anschluss march fourteenth kids in the classes would have to give the hitler salute just as kids maybe and some in some of our schools give the pledge of allegiance within two days that began to occur and this is adolf hitler speech in vienna at the center part of the plaza in vienna called the hold in plots heroes plaza he would write or say in this hour i can report to the german people the greatest accomplishment of my life i can announce before history the entry of my homeland into the german reich and this is what it looked like at the time millions of people on the street and in the plaza as he was flying back to germany shortly after that speech it is reported that he was like a little boy all the time he flew over austria because he was so moved that he finally achieved his dream to annex austria but things are not good for everybody  and i at this point i almost want to think i know you haven't heard from richard brommer for a while because he's coming but but the point is what was he experiencing at the time what was his family expect and so things were not good for all people in austria and vienna and so these are jews that are going to you you have the whole notion of what i would call unrestrained state sponsored bullying and as one person would write the beast in man has awoken finally the day has come when human beings can unleash their sadistic lust on fellow humans hundreds of suicides by austrian jews who many times thought they were austrians more than they were jewish and when they see what's happening they can't take it anymore and they commit suicide sometimes as individuals sometimes as couples businesses start to be taken over the loss of housing possessions employment and also mobility if you got out on the first train you might make it out but you couldn't get out on the second and people talk about that this is one of the more common and one of the most famous photographs of the anschluss and they call them scrubbing parties why were they scrubbing parties because they were actually scrub you know remember those crosses that you saw from that catholic kind of party where the jews actually were supporting that party when they were going to have that plebiscite when they were going to have the vote they they provided about five hundred thousand rights marks ok to to help that austria would not become part of germany now they're being forced to wash off those crosses on the grounds and on buildings oftentimes with acid and it would also be times when there would be bullying man beaten women ra etc and one person would write at the time genocide started with the washing of st and why is that because law is no longer mattered there was a new law on the land and it wasn't the law of constitutions and it wasn't the laws of checks and balances the law was the power of the gun and the power of a tyrant at the same time period because stoppel enter vienna around the same time march twel himmler here the head of the s s and his first kind of commanding officer reinhard heydrich they also work with the austrian nazi secret police a man named ernest colt bruner who actually replace this man after he's later assassinated in the war in czechoslovakia near prague on march eighteenth a new law was established the rights fear her s himmler and the head of the german police also him may take measures necessary for security and order even beyond the legal limits it basically means that the kostopoulos in charge and they can almost do whatever they want and this will become the model when later when they move into czechoslovakia later when they move to poland where ever they move the gestapo is there at the same time period a young lieutenant name a eichmann also comes to vienna he's thirty two years of age and he makes his name in vienna this is where the the the career of adolf eichmann takes takes off and he was actually born in germany but educated in vienna and he becomes one of those nazis who joined the austrian nazi party and goes underground but he becomes he he was assigned in berlin to to research jews but it's in austria and name address party membership whether jew freemason practicing catholic or protestant what are they doing there using statistical and almost scientific modern means to look at the statistical census basis of a population and they're going to utilize this information ultimately to grab power and later maintain power and later use that power to to murder millions and they used an i b m machine and there was a german subsidiary in germany called the de whole mog hollerith machine and this was the machine we've seen people who are old enough seen the punch cards and that's how they would dissect cell by cell the german cultural body we report every individual characteristic on a card these are not dead card they come to life when the cards are sorted at a rate of twenty a stablished by hitler in march of one nine hundred thirty three and many of jews and any many of the austrians who would resist would initially be assented doco also book involved and later you'll see this later t tunnels in and what was the dot com model the doco model was places of slave labor of experimentation and ultimately of extermination it was also a cat a further categorize ation of people in on this you see the the symbols that people had to wear you see the triangles up there these are viennese jews action but down here you have red triangles were for political prism yellow were for jews green were for criminals purple or pink were for homosexuals purple four were for jehovah witness and black also could be brown and some places were gypsies and people they keep considered antisocial people without jobs people who were hard to control people who were home in march fifteenth three days after every public official must give loyalty oath to hitler or be removed from office jewish judges and lawyers were also removed from offices fifty thousand soldiers an austrian army pledged blood oath to hitler and there were also thousands of austrians who were arrest imprisoned not everyone went along but if you didn't go along jews and jews who were maybe just because they were jewish were also put in prison but also socialist workers people who and this is actually i believe the general who will later be with the german army outside of stalin grabbed the germans decide at the time the nazis that they're going to have their own vote and it's going to be scheduled a month later so they put together what would be the equivalent of almost a billion dollar political campaign and here's some photographs of that whether it's night time or day time this is actually right outside the viennese cathedral they will play lenny reeve installs film thousands of times in every little village throughout austria and this would be their ballot you're supposed to choose the big one not the little one and actually one person who chose was the cardinal cardinal theodore in nets or he would actually choose the ja publicly and he would write a letter to hitler which gets him in trouble with the vatican worry he  letter with a high hitler and he wasn't supposed to do that no i think the cardinal was kind of in a difficult place also i remember the catholic church supported the other party they supported that they supported the other vote not this  but the fact is he thought might be in a friend of hitler that he could gain brownie points and he was not successful by the end of the year he was having rocks thrown at him by the end of the year german the nazis would wood the social welfare organizations that were involved in the catholic church the homes for the mentally disabled the homes for orphans so in some sense if he thought he was going to be hitler's friend hitler betrayed him austria it was about ninety nine percent for the course jews couldn't vote all the resistors were in prison so it was also a smaller population they divided austria into seven provinces and the head who was given kind of as a political favor whereas he becomes the head of the vienna knees province and a dildo glob generic becomes like the mayor or the the head of of that area he's so corrupt however that by within a year he's kicked out even by the nazis because he's doing blackmail corruption graft dick cetera but but the s s head heinrich himmler loves him and thinks he's a in germany over five years would take place in vienna over five weeks so it's a radicalize ation and by the end of the year one hundred and one new anti semitic laws would be established in all and this would becom fertile further radicalized when they go into the check in czechoslovakia in later in poland what took five weeks would take a month it would take several weeks so it's a continual radicalization but it first radicalizes really quickly in austria it's state enacted area night zation of business property and industry this is herman gehring again he's looking in as this is an opportunity not only to help the reich become more a more powerful as a military power but also as a way to enrich himself and they they start moving away from the unleashed bully and the unleashed kind of we're going to come into your home and rampaging because they realize this is not the way you do things the way you do things is systematically scientifically and we want to squeeze every penny out of every business out of every jewish bank account out of every jewish home so it becomes very very insidious and that's the reason i call that state inactive area night zation it's no longer that person in the crowd that's coming in fact if you did that you would be arrested gestapo yourself they say we want total control total control again jewish business is our area in this is one said during the first months it gave the impression of a massive robbery can this was also the time when art is first stolen by the nazis and this was also the famous painting by a jewish woman the the model is a jewish woman named  czech republic when they go to lithuania and other places jewish children are segregated in prohibited from public schools in april one nine hundred thirty eight jews are banned from universities this is what the medical faculty at the university of look look like in april of may of one nine hundred thirty eight this is the head of the faculty member down at the very front edward perkoff and this is what it meant to be a nazi at the time and to be a loyal austrian  eichmann begins to visit the jewish community within four days after being there he goes to the main synagogue in this is outside the main synagogue and he recognizes that we are going to put an iron hand on the jewish community and this is the head of the jewish community his name is joseph lowe and her he was initially imprisoned and then adolf eichmann and others recognize in order for us to do what we really want we need help within the jewish community so he let him out of prison and loan which would right everyone in a nazi occupied country who was in a public position or compelled to maintain such a position in the interest of his charges had to work with the german authorities and in this sense he was a collaborator i don't like the word collaboration because it assumes that you're going after the same thing the same goal the same interest the fact is there was two different interest the jews interest was to survive and to try to help the community survive the germans interest whereas to to rape to pillage to plunder and ultimately to murder so it's two different interests but on the other hand if someone has a gun to your head and to the head of your the gun at the head of your families what are you going to do is that collaboration or is that compliance i call it compliance this is eight off eichmann again right here and he's outside right outside the main jewish synagogue and he writes in may eighth one thousand tomorrow i will again check on the offices of the jewish community they are completely in my hands they dare not take a step without checking with me first that is the way it should be it gives better possibilities this is the jewish community outside a police station every jewish family was required to register if you register you know how many are in a family you know where they live etc the jews the vienna model was jewish immigration you also have the time were many jews are trying to get out of germany it becomes more radicalized in austria and these are jews standing outside the polish embassy but they would also be outside the spanish embassy the u s embassy all the embassies at the time but it was difficult to get a visa it wasn't easy it cost you money it cost you time it cost you bureaucracy some families had resources others didn't have resources and every moment the germans are going to try to steal from you and make your life more difficult and there was actually a german board game like a monopoly game and that's what it was about it was about jews moving from one place on the gameboard to another and then ultimately they'll try to get into palestine ok it was very complicated like in boston they would say ok we're going to go to belmont to get one part of your visa well the next port you have to go to boston oh and by the way that's not quite good enough then we're going to send you to hyde park and wait a minute then you're going to go to everett so that's how convoluted it initially was and remember at every step you could be beaten up and at every step you're going to be in a line and at every step someone's going to take your money from you so i came in and looked at this and he said there has to be a better way that we can all and so with the jewish community particularly he said how can we create a better system to get people out of austria and at this time the germans are not above killing jews they just want to get rid of him you want to get him out of germany and they want to get him in austria and they said how can we create a organizational infrastructure to get jews out of germany and austria as quickly as possible and so they said the only way we can do it is work with the jews and they began to this is one of the lines that begin to form so the austrian immigration now is no longer headed by the state department it's headed by the gestapo if they develop a conveyor belt system where instead of going from south boston mass of panic cetera you're going to be in one building where you can get all your paper stamped at the same you're still going to get things stolen from you they're still going to be long lines they're still going to be harassment and all those other things but it's all going to be done and done in the same building they utilize the jewish community says yes we'll be glad to do that everyone was it was to their common interest it was the interest of the gestapo and eichmann they wanted to get jews out it was to the interest of the jewish community we want to get people out and it was to the interest of the individual people themselves we want to get out but the problem with quotas is this one year it's a quotas for immigration two years or even the next year it's quotas for slave labor and then a year later it's quotas for deportation and so so this is the beginnings of the jewish community becoming involved in quota system working with the gestapo and the nazis but also getting dragged in to choosing who they're going to take keep and who they're going to send and so this also begins in austria obviously jews are stripped of housing possessions and money and this later becomes the emigration model for germany now some people are wealthy and some people are well known like sigma syngman inanna freud he's about eighty years old he has a sponsor dr rufus jones in great britain said i will sponsor you and but he still has to get out and the germans don't quite know what to do with him he's famous they don't want to have bad publicity and so they said we'll let you waltz segment with your daughter we're going to take a lot of your money we're going to repossess your house but we'll let you go only if you sign a statement that you were not brutalized and you were not tortured and sigmund freud said i'll be a poor man but i'll be out and he said i'll be glad to do that so right before he signs prize in physics one thousand nine hundred thirty eight he was one of the the discovers of cosmic rays he would come to the united states erwin schrodinger nobel prize in physics and the father one of the fathers of quantum physics would go to ireland in one nine hundred thirty three we have famous film theatre directors billy wilder who did all those famous marlon monroe movies some like it hot the seven year itch sunset boulevard double ind get out and he would write the famous book on the armenian genocide the forty days a moose a dog but what happens if you're not famous what happens if you have no sponsors what happens if you're just an ordinary person maybe with a mother who's sick or a disabled son or disabled daughter how do you get it and so some of them would write ads and this is from a london newspaper where they're trying to mainly see please have someone sponsor us and this sponsoring notion was taking place across the world if you had a jewish relative you try to have them sponsor you in new york city but again it's going to cost you it's going to cost the people on one side and it's going to cost people on the other side this these are statistics of jewish austrian immigration from one nine hundred thirty three to one nine hundred thirty eight and you see some of the places they win and frank's family they went to amsterdam they will later because when the germans attacked thousand nine hundred thirty eight so many people are trying to get into switzerland that it closes its borders to refugees and this is a refugee camp of illegal aliens jews who are trying to get into switzerland and there in prison switzerland also made a deal with nazi germany that in order to in order to have a passport jews they had to have a red j on it no one jewish man named paul graniger would save thirty six hundred jews he was a police chief in one of the border towns he had great compassion on what was happening and he began to invite them to come he's actually betrayed by other swiss he loses his rank he loses his job and for the rest of his life he will basically be a poor man who works at menial jobs one nine hundred fifty four he would write he was basically a question of saving human lives threatened with death how could didn't seriously consider bureaucratic schemes and calculations my personal well being measured against the cruel fate of these thousands was so insignificant and an important that i never even  he would be named one of the righteous non jews by yob the sham and later famous memorial would come up for him in his little town but that was after he died he was totally black listed their stories going around him he was trying to get rich from this he was taking advantage of jewish women except none of that was true and it wasn't only proven untrue about thirty years franklin delano roosevelt's tries to have a worldwide conference what do we do with all these jewish refugees and it ultimately is a failure of everyone's looking for the united states to open up its arms and the united states calls the conference but it doesn't open up its arms so everyone basically says the united states isn't going to do it they're supposed to be the world leader why should we do it hitler actually uses it as propaganda and he will say you don't want the jews either but you want us to have them how dare you you  k and this is the sign no place for jews to go some jews convert and one of the places they converted was the british embassy chapel one thousand nine hundred twenty five jews converted to ng in the summer of one nine hundred thirty eight so that was an option for some jews quakers some converted to quakerism there were protestant groups some people some religious groups christian religious groups took in jews whether they converted or not others would want them to convert he was it was very it depended on the group and it depended on the times this was the pastor the english anglican priest who helped on that ah there's the case of irwin and the mother lies so would write i will be a mahommedan a muslim if it will help my child she had two children her husband was a non jew a socialist but he was recognized by the nazi as a man with great potential so they said you know what here's what we'll do and when we will we will give you a good job in germany and you can use your talents in your potential to help us but there's one kavya you have to divorce your wife and separate yourself from your chip and irwin chose not to do that and they would spend several years working in in very volatile situations but they will ultimately be adopted by the quakers and they will make their way to england and right when they get there  irwin has a heart and this is also the experience of many jewish hulls mothers and fathers they will work so hard to get alt that once they get out something horrible will happen and they may die or the family unit  at the same time period heinrich himmler this is him he decides he's going to make new money for the s s and they have they established the most secure concentration camp in all of europe and it's called motels and the first prisoners arrived on august eighth one nine hundred thirty eight they're not jewish most there was one jew who came in september the first jew he was a homosexual and he would be dead five months later so this and isn't really for jews at this time it will become a place where many jews will end up after they start releasing jews from auschwitz and other prison camps and they have death marches but initially it's for political prisoners and criminals and people that the germans feel are a threat and these are two photos i took in march they would force people to basically work them to death this is a famous steps i think one hundred eighty jews were were men were forced to carry big boulders and if they fit if they failed they would be beaten to death they would line them up one after the other they don't have boulders here but if they fail it would knock everyone else down the line it was places of extreme humiliation and ultimately places this is a photograph from june of one nine hundred forty one and all of these men are naked within the concentration camp and they're being sprayed for lice so many will die of starvation of being worked to death of execution of torture from all nations from italy from spain there would be people who joined the republican spanish army in the in the spanish civil war that will be part of this group soviet p o w s later poles people from czechoslovakia muslims from turkey all of them will be put in this and when i went there about one hundred nineteen thousand would die in m and one of its forty nine satellite but when i was researching it i found another person with my last name and his name was hans braun and his prisoner twenty nine thousand four hundred seventy four of motels and he would be born concentration and this is the aftermath austria at this time becomes the official emigration model for germany why because they were so successful adolf eichmann was so successful in getting jews out of austria that they jews are forced to pay for damages both in austria and germany this is when forced slave labor of jews is legally enacted and this is when jewish communities also begin quotas for jewish labor and this is when also the first time that the ghetto policy is debated and the jewish star is discussed they wanted to make the jewish star in austria and germany at the time but hitler rescinded it he would not allow it because  relations will actually begin in poland in november around november eighteenth one nine hundred thirty nine all the world is here is what's happening this is from britain save the children to be silent means to acquiesce they don't say save the adults and save the parents they only say save the children what are children without their parents and the united states there's joint hearings of a subcommittee again admission of german refugee children but not the parents they don't change the quota laws this is the time of the children's trains which are coming from austria from germany and from prague and these are young jewish children waving at the camera man and many of them will never see their people this is also the time where we have another example of a righteous man from china in this case who is going to write visas for jews and send them to shanghai in his name is fain shang whole he will later be relieved of his duties by the chinese government but he is saving thousands of jews through the writing of visas and they go to shanghai and they call it little vienna and here up the top you have dr friedman m d console dollars and it's right below it is chinese so again some are saved however shanghai wasn't always a nice place to live either wasn't like what would later become but but jews began to put in bottles that they would put in the ocean because they wanted someone to find them and this is one to the citizens of the united states s o s s o s about thirty five hundred desperate european displaced persons children women and men are helplessly in shanghai owing to a small quota restrictions appealed to congress for us help to come to america let san francisco become our port of hope to however this is the st louis which in one nine hundred thirty nine was not allowed into the united states into cuba or in the dominican republic and didn't have many can republic many would be sent back to germany and they would die in the united states itself was not a nice place to be this is from madison square garden in hundred thirty nine it's the german bond rally and this is that where they're saying the pledge of allegiance and at the same time they're giving the hitler salute there was another option the road to palestine british palestine many of the roads came through vienna some came through the adriatic sea some came through the danube and then there were others that came down through the black sea but the british didn't really want jews coming to palestine and they began to restrict quotas themselves why because under their rule were eighty million muslims from india to the middle east and these muslim did not want jews in palestine so the german the british themselves begin jews along the danube at the same time period the jewish council is working with eichmann and they're saying we still want to get jews out we still want to get them out as fast as possible so they have job training for immigration to pal and by the end of singing the jewish national anthem their parents are saying goodbye to them and adolf eichmann in the gestapo or they're trying to take the cameras away from people because they do not want people to see that they are linked with palestine we linked up with jews so it's it's a totally surreal kind of example the most sought at the time is actually working with the gestapo because they're trying to get jews into israel or into palestine i guess palestine at that  are some of the people in the training young girls they're trying to educate children maybe these are professors who are going to learn how to be factory workers are women who are learning how to be seamstress  podiatrist film developers and even orchestras and some of the orchestra will orchestra people the people who played in the orchestras would later play in the extermination camps in the concentration camps because vienna was known for its in september first one nine hundred thirty nine germany attacks poland everything changes again the first action for jews in vienna are polish jews who are not german citizens or austrian sins are arrested and deported to book involved and all of them i think all of them died within several months what happens if you one of the disabled the jewish community is trying to educate the disabled for jobs so that when they go to other countries maybe they can survive but many of these countries they don't want healthy jews much less disabled jews but what do you do the jewish community is still trying to help them but at the same time period they set up euthanasia centers the nazis do and they set up one in austria called hard time castle and they set up five others as well and this becomes kind of the first movement towards the final solution getting rid of the disabled and between the first two years one nine hundred thirty nine and one nine hundred forty one seventy thousand plus people will be killed in these next one is that a hard time castle one nine hundred thousand would be murdered here and two of the leaders of this would be a police officer to police officer christian worth in front strong they would be in charge of some of these euthanasia centers and they would later be sent to poland and become instrumental in the final solution the net tightens every place the jews you know member that the germans want to get rid of the jews but they just conquered poland in they inherited three point five million of them what do you do with them where they go in and there were different plans one is the madagascar plan which actually first occurred after world war one and was the idea was to collect all the jews in europe and send them to madagascar there is one problem with that the british still control controlled the seas and it wouldn't work though hitler wanted to be part of this to be part of the peace negotiations with the british that if they formed peace the british would allow them to send jews to madagascar the german the british never surrendered so that plan went there was the soviet plan hitler contacted joseph stalin said would you accept jews and russia stalin said no the british tighten the and foresman of illegal aliens and it between march  september of one nine hundred thirty nine fewer than a thousand refugees are allowed to settle in the british colonies not just in palestine in india in the african colonies and this is where they would be thrown many of them in the british prison in marut right in the indian ocean and this is the view of the british colonial office detentions of refugees should be sufficiently punitive to continue to act as a south of haifa called lete richard brommer now comes back into this remember all of these options he's maybe trying to get away maybe he's thrown in prison we don't i don't really know but on poland the germans took over the other half and it's a place called nisco and they order the jewish consul to us a thousand man poor man which the jewish council reason they did not want to use on the war and so all to mentally they said maybe we can have some people volunteer so they couldn't quite reach a thousand four transports were planned the first group was nine hundred twelve men by the second group the jewish council was no longer participate in the selection so the gestapo took over and they primarily chose it is quite likely or possible that richard brom or was one of the prisoners because he's part of the second of six hundred seventy two people they're allowed to take work clothes food for three to four weeks in tools that's it they don't know where they're going they're shipped out from the vienna train station  just sent off into and he has no last address at the time at that time the first transport was five hundred got say and it's this is the building i took this photograph in march of this year and this is five heidi right here is the doorway you know obviously probably look different but that's where his address was now the jewish reservation disses where it's located way over in and right down here you see from vienna they're trying to send some they're sending people from prague and from other places in germany about ninety five thousand would ultimately go there we don't know one of the groups that went was the skis mr julian ski joseph when i first gave this talk i gave it to a group of survivors some of who were from vietnam and when i came to this part this woman who now lives in newton did a jilin ski stop to me and she said i know exactly the train station i was there and she said that was the last time i ever saw my father joseph and  remember it so strongly because i was a young teenage girl and i spoke to my mother i said we would never see him and she said my mother became so angry at me she said of course we'll see him again he's going he's probably will call us in a few weeks but deport he was an artist from prague named live hoss he would also survive though he would be tortured in treason stock and he sketched out what nisco looked like at the time and so the jews were forced to create this kind of concentration camp like place these are some jews working this is a group of jews are there is richard brommer in this i don't know these are some of the jewish isn't a german train this is a russian train and after a while there were deaths deaths from disease starvation exposure and executions and they begin to do germans realized this was not working  well and they began to push the jews into the russian sector at the point of a gun so many of these jews would later be boarded in deported in russian trains to the good some will survive there some will die of hundred forty the nazi plan failed but they learn from it and they realize that if you send people out you need to be have a better plan on where they're going when they arrive and so again they're also saying order next time we send people out we need an infrastructure there needs to be unity between the railroads in the military and the administration and the s s and the gestapo now one hundred ninety eight people  vienna many of them are now homeless and one of them is richer he returns back to be as one of the one hundred nine this shows some statistics kind of where we begin the story in nineteen thirty eight and between march of thirty eight in january of one nine hundred forty fifty one thousand five hundred one jews emigrate from austria about fifty four thousand still remain thirty four thousand are too ill or too old one of the fifty four thousand will be richer but the jewish community also hopes to help others emigrate but it's becoming more difficult at the time jews are being taken all from all over austria and they're being concentrated in district two of the there's a loss of housing further anti semitic laws restricting curfews only three point eight percent of the jewish and she's a young social worker of twenty three years age he's trying to feed criminals jewish people in prison she's trying to hide the mentally disabled and she's working with a famous doctor who's head of psychiatry at the jewish immigration at this time begins to move to d and some of the first people that moved are french jews and they're sent back to france and they're basically cons placed in concentration camps and they will later many of them they establish the process you take you take kilos of possessions with everything else must remain you give the key to the stoppel when you leave your apartment and at that time other people into it jewish police become involved in the process and they try to you to do two they start having selection list and they start going into the jewish homes and the jewish apartments and if they're not who are righteous one is this check woman who lives in austria named maria potus ill and for eight years she will protect and save her foster jewish son  burka she would have unlimited harassment humiliations and deprivations she would walk down the street with his jewish star he her hand in hand they would throw rocks at her they would call names to her but she  ultimately kept them alive for six years and she would be honored by jada share as one of the righteous there's a there's an a famous austrian actress dorothy and now she had a jewish friend who was living in her home that friend was part of the selection group the selection that were supposed to go and their their way and their put their way in their fifties kilos on dorothy and nessa living room floor and a certain point she says stop you're not going just i'm going to try to hide you you're not we're not going to go through this nonsense and so she said at that point her jewish friend broke out and weeping she took her to bed the jewish person slept very well she said i didn't in that lie because i knew at that point i was crossing the line that if they discovered me my life was also in deep she would be honored at ya the sham and at her speech she would write the greatest the darkness of a period the goes and why the justification is for housing because they're saying why should jews have housing when there's not enough housing around so that becomes the rationale and prisoner richer bronner's prisoner one thousand and two of a deportation of one thousand and four and he will this is the train from vienna to kill supposing they were probably sent there as work crews because they needed slave labor because they're going to attack the soviet union for months later these are other families that are going to kill so the kill so ghetto is a stablished one month after he arrives on march thirty first  one has about twenty seven thousand people this is where it's located every dot you see is a ghetto there are a thousand and ninety eight of them as small as a hundred people as large as warsaw half a there was a young polish well girl who was writing postcard did he know or don't know these are care of orphans in the hills to get more children this is a group photo of austrian who was killed on the same train as richard brahma is this doctor from vienna a doctor is a door aaron fest his fate is unknown was he murdered with the other jewish doctors they took all their went to pull stock and this was his last known address glaucon gosse goss a nine it's now an art gallery at the time it was a butcher shop these are two austrian artist eichmann was in front of the jewish council on the right is the only synagogue that survived within austria at the time the main jewish synagogue and i spoke with this man named wolf eckstein who is the ar he changed his lame like a lot of other jews for we don't know the reason why i changed the name though he was married about six months later to a person named olga vilhelm who was survived the war and die i think in two thousand and three what was his occupation his occupation was kind of like a middle management bureaucrat could be an insurance company could he was educated but he wasn't at the highest level and he wasn't at the lowest he was one of the professional kind of like civil servant across the street was a glock and got six and when i was before i went to vienna i was a talk is being arranged for me in new york city by a group  his family all of the sons would come to the united states however the grandparents ended up at six o'clock and got say six they would be sent to a poly up up poland and they would be lawyer and he was also adolf eichmann his boss in july of one nine hundred forty one herman gehring remember him he orders reinhard heidrich to end jewish immigration and to repair the plan germany and into austria in the autumn of one nine hundred forty one jealous of lo and hers asked the gestapo and others are you going to deport more jews and they said no they lied to him and then they changed their mind so well there maybe  he was asked to speak at yom kippur war in the autumn of one nine hundred forty one and when he got up to speak all he could do was this was the be the nazi plan it wasn't just vienna it would include all of europe and the numbers and even expanding beyond the occupied area to places like great britain ireland turkey and other places the plan was formulated in january these are the extermination camps these are the vienna deportations to the east these are a list and i know you can't read this richard brahmas was this first one of here or second one and it was also the fourth one this is comes after he was deported from glaucon gossip nine i also got this at the jewish synagogue and these names being crossed off are those who are being selected for the in the last located where he lived this is where they gathered in a school yard about two blocks away from where he lived there's the train station and i'm going to kind of close in silence i think the words almost the image prisoner twenty nine thousand four hundred seventy four he would be transferred he would be incarcerated on may fourteenth one thousand nine hundred three he would join the group of and of these types of folks and he would be transferred to a power plant on the river in called grosse or a grocery mean power plant at that location he would die or be murdered