FROM AUSTRIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 11

FROM AUSTRIA.

EXILE IN AUCKLAND.

HOPES FOR NEW START.

BOUND FOR COMMONWEALTH.! Traveling third class, in a cabin so comfortless that he and his wife preferred the deck to their bunks, an exiled Austrian passed through Auckland this week, bound on a British ship for Australia. He had been told in London that he might get a chance to start life afresh in the Commonwealth. He travelled third class because the Nazi police had allowed him to take out of Austria only two shillings in cash. The rest of the money was confiscated and he was given a receipt —in case he wanted to collect it on his return.

He fled from Austria because he was terrified by Nazi persecution. Every time the telephone bell rang in his flat in Vienna, he was terrified;' it mightj be the police, requesting politely that he call at headquarters and explain why he had failed to find illegalities in the affairs of several Jewish firms he had been ordered to investigate. If he could find nothing illegal, the Nazis would be forced to release the heads of the firms, whom they were holding in prison. He could find nothing wrong, and reported this to the police, who received his reports without comment. Their silence terrified him. Launched His Own Btuineu. For fifteen years he had been struggling to gain distinction in his profession. Five years ago he launched his own business. He worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day for several years; the business prospered and in January of this year he realised that he was a comparatively wealthy man. He and his wife planned to make a world tour. Then, in Marcli, came the Nazi putsch. Austrian working classes waved their banners and hailed the Fuehrer in a gust of frenzied enthusiasm. Three dayS|

after the Invasion they were disillusioned. Everywhere the exile saw ruined .careers, frightened Austrians and confiscated property.

Then, while those reports were still lying at headquarters, the Nazis discovered that his wife's father was a Jew. The Nazi conception of the Jew, said the exile, was of something between man and beast, something not worthy of consideration as a human being. Therefore, his persecution began afresh. He was ordered either to divorce his wife or take the consequences.

Within a week he had made his arrangements. He persuaded a German firm to allow him to use their name. Then he went to the police and asked for a permit to leave Austria to travel to Australia as representative of the German firm. He was given permission to be absent for a year—and to take hisi wife. Officially, he must be back in Vienna by next August. Gave Hia Money Away. Knowing that his money would be confiscated, he gave it away to his mother and his relatives. Some of it he spent in buying expensive shirts and suits, which he wore on and off until his departure, in order that their newness would not attract attention at the frontier. He persuaded a business colleague, who had been forced to join the Nazis, to get his baggage passed without inspection. At the frontier his magnificent camera, presented by Austrian friends, who doubted whether they would see him again, was taken. An officer seized it, but politely offered a receipt—just in case he claimed it on his return from Australia. After a three-quarters' of an hour search of his baggage and person, he was allowed to pass. In Zurich, Switzerland, he had a friend who gave him enough money to get to London. There he presented a letter of introduction to an English solicitor, who, though he had never seen the Austrian before, overwhelmed him with kindness and lent him sufficient funds to get himself and his wife to Australia. And so he passed through Auckland. While he waited for the boat to pass on, he and his wife ascended Mount Eden. The peaceful city lying below them reminded his wife of the quietness of Vienna. "We could never live here," she said, weeping. So they returned to the ship, knocking on the door of their I cabin before they entered, in order to | let the mouse which infested it, btve warning to return to its hole.