Now the odd thing is, which is relevant to this project, is that the Viennese – the population of Vienna – did not really behave terribly well after the Nazi takeover. I know Churchill said, “We can never forget in these islands that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression.” That is actually true, though most English Jews deny that. It is true. Austria was the- after all we’d been under siege for five years. …The persecution of Austria by, by its big neighbour next door throughout the 30s cannot be denied. But it is equally true that in 1938 there must have been some kind of- something snapped in the psychology of the locals. Because in early ’38, we could still hope that the- the independent Austria would win the plebiscite …against Germany. And then on the 13th of March some-something snapped. I can remember the suddenness of it. Because… it’s on the evening, but not the 13th, on the Friday that the German Army marched in. There’d still been street- anti-Nazi street demonstrations that afternoon. And the same late afternoon or early evening, we saw a group of Nazis walking past a group of policemen, and shouting, “Heil Deutsche Wache” to which the policemen replied in chorus, “Heil”. Well… At which one of the Nazis turned to the other and said, “You see what whores they are. Two hours ago they beat us with rubber truncheons. And now they shout Heil.” You can see how some- something must have snapped psychologically. Because the population of Vienna appeared to have turned nasty on one five minutes. Of course it wasn’t the whole population of Vienna, far from it. …And the seeds of resistance were in fact, which is generally forgotten, that very day. But that’s another story.
