The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna () was a Sicherheitsdienst (SD-Security Service) agency established in August 1938 to accelerate the forced emigration of Austrian Jews and (starting in October 1939) to organize and carry out their deportation. The resolution of emigration issues relating to Austrian citizenship, foreign citizens’ rights, foreign currencies and the taxation of assets were coordinated in order to accelerate this emigration process. The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was the only institution empowered with the issuance of exit permits for Jews in Austria from the time of the Anschluss in 1938 until the ban on Jewish emigration in 1941. The Vienna Agency became the prototype for similar SS agencies used to implement the deportation of Jews in Amsterdam, Prague and many other European cities.
History Prewar: Inception and role in forced emigration
Adolf Eichmann, who had been sent from Berlin as the head of the Agency, and his associate Alois Brunner, set the emigration quotas, the fulfillment of which was delegated by the Nazi Party to the Israelite Community of Vienna. The Israelite Community had been officially closed by the Nazis in March 1938 and re-opened under the name "Jewish Community of Vienna." Their Nazi-appointed Jewish leader was Josef Löwenherz and the appointed head of the "Emigration Division of the Jewish Community" (German: Auswanderungsabteilung der Kultusgemeinde) was Benjamin Murmelstein. Another important role in the organization was taken by Berthold Storfer. By forcing the Jewish Communities into Nazi-subordinated Judenräte or "Jewish councils," the Nazis were able to coerce the Jewish people into taking an active bureaucratic role in their own destruction.
In the summer of 1938, Löwenherz and co-workers of the Jewish Community of Vienna appealed to Eichmann to simplify the bureaucratic preliminary procedures for those wishing to emigrate. The Reichskommissar responsible for Nazi Austria, Josef Bürckel, subsequently established the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna on 20 August 1938, formally under the leadership of Walter Stahlecker, but in reality led by Eichmann.Hans Safrian: Eichmann und seine Gehilfen (English: Eichmann and his Helpers). Frankfurt/Main 1995, p. 41 (in German) Later Franz Josef Huber, head of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo-Security Police) and SD for the Nazi districts of Vienna, Oberdonau and Niederdonau, was given formal leadership of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna.Thomas Mang: Gestapo-Leitstelle Wien - Mein Name ist Huber (English: Head Gestapo Agency of Vienna: My name is Huber), in: Communiques of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance No. 164, pp. 1–5. (PDF, in German) Huber delegated most of his duties to his deputy Karl Ebner, who became known as the “gray eminence” Thomas Mang: Gestapo-Leitstelle Wien - Mein Name ist Huber (English: Head Gestapo Agency of Vienna: My name is Huber), in: Communiques of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance No. 164, pp. 1–5. (PDF, in German) of the Vienna Gestapo in light of his nearly unrestricted police powers. The surviving directives to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration carry his signature.
In the Central Agency, all essential external governmental agencies were represented which could issue "documents of compliance" (German: Unbedenklichkeitsbescheinigungen) if no arrears were owed for rents, fees, taxes or the racist-motivated "Jewish Capital Levy" (German: Judenvermögensabgabe), and the Reich Flight Tax had been paid. The applicant was processed in an assembly-line manner, so that the "Jews who wished to emigrate were, in a timespan of eight to fourteen days",Heinz Boberach (Editor): Die Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938–1945. (English: The Reports from the Reich, 1938–1945) Herrsching 1984, p. 28, , vol. 2 (in German) furnished with all of the necessary paperwork. Eichmann boasted that the number of "Jews forced to emigrate" had been increased to 350 per day; by the end of September 1938, 38,000 Jews had left Austria legally.Hans Safrian: Eichmann und seine Gehilfen. p. 45 (in German) Reinhard Heydrich stated on 12 November 1938 that the total number had already increased up to 45,000.Stenografische Niederschrift der Besprechung der Judenfrage bei Göring am 12. November 1938. (English: Stenographic Transcription of the conversation about the "Jewish question" with Göring on the 12th of November, 1938. In: IMT. Band 28, , Dokument 1816-PS: S. 532/533
The costs of the forced emigration would be paid for by the victims. The Jewish Community of Vienna, which was under strain from the rising amount of tasks from emigration and charity work, and simultaneously operating with reduced financing, had, with the permission of Eichmann, asked the representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for financial support.Hans Safrian: Eichmann und seine Gehilfen. p. 40 In addition, applicants for emigration were forced to pay an "emigration payment" (German: Auswandererabgabe) on an income-based pay scale in order to cover the travel costs of impoverished Jews. The primary goal of this payment was the Nazi theft of Jewish assets within the guidelines of “aryanization”. Wealthy Jewish citizens received preferential treatment through the Gildemeester Organization. This was not actually intended to bestow any kind of "privilege", but rather used as a pseudo-legal form for the Nazi state to rob Jewish assets directly, in contrast to the standard "aryanization" procedure, whereby mostly individuals with the Nazi Party benefited.
The organization and effectiveness of the Vienna "Central Agency", which was located in the Palais Albert Rothschild, quickly became a model example within the SS for the establishment of the German "Reich Central Agency for Jewish Emigration" (German: Reichszentrale für jüdische Auswanderung) in Berlin. Later, based on the so-called "Vienna Model", Central Agencies for Jewish Emigration were also established in Amsterdam and Prague.Gabriel Anderl and Dirk Rupnow: Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution (English: The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration as an Institution for Theft). München 2004, p. 303, (in German).
Personnel Alois Brunner, although officially named as the leader of the Central Agency in Vienna in January 1941, was already the de facto chief after Eichmann left in 1939.Gabriel Anderl and Dirk Rupnow: Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution. München 2004, p. 121, (in German). A complete list of personnel from the Central Agency in Vienna has not survived, but the following SS members were among the 17 to 20 co-workers under Alois Brunner:Gabriel Anderl and Dirk Rupnow: Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution. München 2004, pp. 224-225, (in German).
Anton Brunner (1898–1946) Ernst Brückler (1912–?) Anton Burger (1911–1991) Ferdinand Daurach (1912–?) Herbert Gerbing (1914–?) Ernst Girzick (1911–?) Richard Hartenberger (1911–1974) Franz Novak (1913–1983) Karl Rahm (1907–1947) Alfred Slawik (1913–after 1962) Franz Stuschka (1910–1986) Josef Weiszl (1912–after 1956) Anton Zita (1909–1946)
Wartime: Role in the deportations and dissolution In the period of forced emigration, the Central Agency in Vienna "put into practice an official operation which would later be put into full force with the deportation of the Jews."H.G. Adler: Der verwaltete Mensch. Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (English: The Administrated Man: Studies of the Deportation of the Jews from Germany). Tübingen, 1974, p. 13, (in German). Although the name of the Agency remained the same, the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna organized and implemented the deportation of the Austrian Jews out of Vienna, beginning in October 1939 with the transports to Nisko, Poland, and then in February and March 1941 with the deportation over 5,000 Jews from Vienna to ghettos in small Polish towns such as Opole und Kielce.Gabriel Anderl and Dirk Rupnow: Die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution. München 2004, p. 270, (in German). As the practice of state-sponsored exit visas came to a halt with Heinrich Himmler’s ban on Jewish emigration on 18 October 1941, the Central Agency accelerated the deportations, until by the end of 1942, the “Jewish question” in Vienna had been practically "solved." Of the (by definition of the racist Nuremberg Laws) 206,000 Jews who had lived in Austria in 1938, only around 8,000 were left. The personnel of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna were directly responsible for the deportation of at least 48,767 Austrian Jews who were murdered.Jonny Moser: Österreich, in Wolfgang Benz (editor): Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (English: Dimensions of Genocide: The Number of Jewish Victims of National Socialism. München 1991, p. 70, (in English).
The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna continued to operate until its dissolution in March 1943. Later deportations of Jewish victims from Vienna were carried out by the Gestapo. Some of the personnel in the Vienna Central Agency later transferred to the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Prague.Jan Björn Potthast: Das jüdische Zentralmuseum der SS in Prag – Gegnerforschung und Völkermord im Nationalsozialismus (English: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague – Enemy Studies and Genocide in National Socialism). München 2002, p. 261, (in German).
Postwar: Justice, a "sensational discovery" and the documents' whereabouts The postwar biographies of the personnel of the Central Agency of Vienna are very diverse: some were brought to justice, with punishments ranging from relatively mild prison sentences (Ernst Girzick, Richard Hartenberger, Franz Novak, Alfred Slawik, Franz Stuschka, Josef Weiszl) to death sentences for Anton Brunner, Adolf Eichmann and Karl Rahm. Ernst Brückler, Alois Brunner and Anton Burger escaped justice and lived their lives in the postwar years unpunished. The postwar whereabouts and activities of Ferdinand Daurach, Herbert Gerbing and Anton Zita remain unknown.