Ciné privé: Remembering Day 1938/03/12

On the 12th In March 1938, German troops crossed the Austrian border and carried out the “Anschluss” to Hitler Germany. http://www.demokratiezentrum.org/themen/demokratieentwicklung/1918-1938/anschluss.html.

On the 15th In March, Adolf Hitler gave the famous speech at Heldenplatz in front of 250,000 cheering seers.

In a referendum prepared by the Nazi propaganda machine, voted on 10. April 99.75 percent of the Austrians for the connection.

The NSDAP in Styria and Graz already pushed very radically for a political change of power in February and March. This was shown by the powerful National Socialist demonstrations and rallies, distribution of flyers and swastika flags and riots against political opponents. A considerable number of policemen, gendarmes and military belonged to National Socialist divisions. Academics and students were also – measured by their social share in the population – overrepresented in the NSDAP. After the “Anschluss”, terrorist measures were launched against political opponents, some of whom were taken to concentration camps, including prominent Styrians such as Alfons Gorbach (former state leader of the Fatherland Front), Karl Maria Stepan (former governor) and Colonel Franz Zelburg (former security director). At the same time, the systematic persecution and disenfranchisement of the Jews of Graz began. Around 2,400 Grazers were affected by the “Nuremberg Breed Laws”. On the 25th In July 1938, the “National Socialist heroes” of the July coup of 1934 were commemorated with the victory celebration “And you have won”. At this celebration, the jubilant Grazers learned that the “Führer”, in recognition of the services of Styria and Graz to National Socialism, awarded the city the honorary title “City of People’s Rise”. Graz remained the only city of the “Ostmark” with this “award”. The most significant change for urban development brought about the creation of Groß-Graz in October 1938. The unification of the city of Graz with the surrounding communities had already been a political wish under the social democratic city government. As a prelude to his propaganda trip for the referendum on 10. April through Austria Adolf Hitler visited on the 3rd and 4th April Graz. The election event took place in front of thousands of people in the assembly hall of the Weizer Waggonfabrik, which had already been at a standstill for several years due to the global economic crisis. Then Hitler drove in a triumphal procession through the streets of Graz. Cheering crowds lined the route, including tens of thousands of Styrians who had come to the state capital on special trains to see Adolf Hitler. Around 20,000 soldiers, police officers, SA and SS men were deployed in the order and security operation. The referendum a week later also yielded the usual result in Austria in Styria and Graz. However, around 40,000 people were excluded from the vote. National Socialism also found wide acceptance at the universities of Graz very early on. In February and March 1938, the time of the illegal demonstrations, the lecture halls were almost orphaned because the students had almost completely put themselves in the service of the “movement”. Also in the SS and SA there was a broad participation on the part of the students. After the upheaval, the University of Graz saw itself as a southeastern outpost of the new German scientific conception, as a cultural-political pioneer of Germanism and as a “bulnery against the danger from the East”. In a jubilation telegram to Adolf Hitler, the university thanked him for the long-awaited union with the German Reich. The desire to call the University of Graz “Adolf Hitler University” was not granted, the Ministry of Education rejected the request in September 1938. In 1934, 1,720 people belonged to the Israelite cult community, which was 1.1% of the total population of Graz. A large part of the Jewish inhabitants lived and worked in the districts of Lend and Gries, the Murvorstadt. In the months after the “Anschluss”, the National Socialist terror began – arrests, “Aryanizations”, compulsion to emigrate. Between March and November 1938, 417 Jews from Graz emigrated to Palestine alone. Jews who remained in Graz subsequently had to move to Vienna, from where they were later deported. In the “Pogrom Night” from the 9th to the 10th In November 1938, the synagogue was set on fire by the mayor of Graz, Dr. Julius Kaspar, destroyed and the entire area was leveled in order to erase the memory of the synagogue. On the other hand, the office of the Jewish community was spared from burning. All Jews from Graz were subsequently deported to Vienna and Graz was declared the first “Jew-free” city in Ostmark. In March 1940, the IKG was dissolved. After the war, only about 150 Jews returned to Graz. In 1952, the Israelite Church of Graz, which was dissolved in 1940, was re-established. Their Sprengel included the federal states of Styria, Carinthia and the political districts of Oberwart, Güssing and Jennersdorf.

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