Helga Embacher, Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Hanns Haas, Charlotte Natmessnig (Hrsg.): Sonderband 5. Vom Zerfall der Grossreiche zur Europäischen Union – Integrationsmodelle im 20. Jahrhundert (2000)
Von der alten zur neuen Ordnung - Marsha Rozenblit: The Crisis of National Identity: Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy
yet he also mentioned that his father was in shock, unable to speak for days." Strikingly absent was any joy about the new government. The situation of the Galician Jewish refugees living in Vienna typified the dilemma that Jews faced with the dissolution of the monarchy. Indeed, the refugees, threatened with expulsion everywhere, now suffered as foreigners in the lands to which they had fled as citizens during the war. They were truly homeless. Manès Sperber, whose family had fled to Vienna from Galicia in 1916, described that feeling movingly. His family chose to remain in Vienna because “our old homeland would become foreign”. At the same time they feared for their situation in Vienna and wondered what they would do “if the new homeland remained foreign for us?”11 12 * Many refugees wanted nothing more than to return to their homes, and of course large numbers did return, especially to western Galicia where the political situation had stabilized." Others could not return home, however, either because their homes had been destroyed during four years of war, or because the Polish-Ukrainian war made return impossible, or because they realistically feared pogrom violence. Yet they could not stay in Vienna either. Not only did the antisémites lobby vigorously for the expulsion of the refugees, but most Viennese agreed that the refugees did not belong to German-Austria and had to leave as soon as possible.14 Thus, the refugees felt truly homeless: they could not go home and no one wanted them to stay. Jews could regard the political turmoil and anti-Jewish violence that erupted in 1918/1919 in all the successor states, especially in Poland, as proof that Austria’s collapse was a calamity. They watched in dismay as, in Joachim Schoenfeld’s words, “the birth of Poland was accompanied by rivers of Jewish blood.”15 In the context of the Polish-Ruthenian struggle for control of Galicia, violent pogroms erupted that claimed large numbers of Jewish lives. Jews asserted their neutrality in the conflict between Poles and Ukrainians,16 but Polish mobs, led by Polish legionnaires, nevertheless attacked the Jews for their alleged support of Ukrainian indeThe Crisis of National Identity. Jews and the Collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy 11 Saxonhouse, Ernst: Memoirs, unpublished memoir. Leo Baeck Institute, pp. 6-7. 12 Sperber, Manès: God's Water Carriers, translated by Joachim Neugroschel. New York 1987, p. 149. " Deutsch, Helene: Confrontations with Myself. New York 1973, p. 68; she for example, describes how her parents, who had fled to Vienna during the war, eagerly returned to Przemysl at the end. 14 H o ffman n-Ho 11 er, Beatrix: Abreisendmachung: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923. Vienna 1995, pp. 143-59. 15 Schoenfeld, Joachim: Jewish Life in Galicia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Reborn Poland 1898-1939. Hoboken-NJ 1985, p. 201. 16 For an excellent analysis of this neutrality, see Mendelsohn, Ezra: Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926. New Haven 1981, pp. 97-101. 45
