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Schuschnigg Utters Veiled Threat to Jews’ Rights As He Opens Diet

Austria is German and Christian and will remain so, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg declared today at the inaugural session of the Bundestag, Austrian Federal Diet.

He promised the Austrian minorities “exemplary protection,” declaring that “our honor and ambitions demand this,” but warned minority groups that “Austria remains German and also Christian, in accordance with our past and character. Therefore, education of the spirit and the soul has been handed over to the church.

“Austria is reproached abroad with being goverened by Catholics, but I say that Austria is being governed by Austrians,” the Chancellor said.

Although there are approximately 250,000 Jews in Austria, not a single Jewish representative was given a seat in the Bundestag, which is part of the apparatus of the Fascist Corporative Austrian State.


The Chancellor’s speech was regarded here as a direct challenge to the Jewish minority, whose leaders stated recently that Jews would not surrender a single one of their rights guaranteed them by the Austrian constitution and the Treaty of St. Germain, which created post-war Austria.

While Chancellor Schuschnigg has on several occasions declared that his government treats all citizens equally, hundreds of Jewish professionals, including doctors, nurses, dentists, lawyers and government employes, have been deprived of their posts and replaced with “Aryans.” When the Fascist constitution was announced only Dr. Desider Friedmann, president of the Vienna Jewish community, was given a post on the State Council, which is the advisory body to the government.