Archive/File: people/g/goldhagen.daniel.jonah/austria Last-Modified: 1996/05/29 "The antisemitically derived ideological impulse to force Jews to 'work' for its own sake was given expression throughout the German dominion. Nowhere, however, was it more striking than in Austria in March 1938, where it welled up spontaneously during the euphoria accompanying its annexation by Germany. The Austrians' hearty celebrations included immediate symbolic acts of revenge upon the Jews, who in Austria, no less than in Germany, were believed to have exploited and injured the larger society. As seen here, again and again, the circus of Jewish men, women, and children -- commanded to don their finest clothes, being forced to wash streets, sidewalks, and buildings of Vienna (frequently with small brushes and water mixed with burning acid) -- was met by the cheers and jeers of crowds of Austrian onlookers. 'In Waehring, one of Vienna's wealthier sections, Nazis, after ordering Jewish women to scrub streets in their fur coats, then stood over them and urinated on their heads,'<18> This was the purest form of 'non-instrumental' labor, and the purest expression of its ideational and psychological sources." (Goldhagen, 286-7) Work Cited Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996
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