The Significance of Gestures
WEISS, DAVID W.
_The Significance of Gestures A Prominent Israeli Scientist Explains Why He Won't Go to _Austria DAVID W. WEISS "/ believe in the significance of gestures," David Weiss wrote on his first visit...
...I stayed in Israel for several weeks...
...We are now educating a new generation of young people who have not had any personal experience with the Hitler regime...
...My parents, sister and I managed to escape to the United States in 1939...
...I have returned to Austria three times since 1945, first as an American soldier in 1946, twice in later years...
...For that matter, it occurred to me that it wasn't written in any sacred text that David Werss had to be a university professor...
...I signed on the dotted line...
...The two women next to her were killed...
...it is not to be dwelled upon, lest the discomfort compromise our lives of the moment...
...Nineteen thirty-eight was the year when many outstanding people had to leave the country to escape persecution by the Nazis...
...A distant cousin of mine, a newspaper reporter, called to say that my wife had been killed in a bomb explosion at the store...
...It was our intention to demonstrate what disaster racial, religious or political prejudice can cause...
...I was born in Grinzing, into a family with very deep roots in the country...
...Waldheim's election—I don't need that as proof that anti-Semitism is alive and healthy in Austria...
...Fortunately, my father had a foresight of what the fate of good Jews—old Austrians with Iron Crosses—would be...
...But that isn't so...
...According to our information you are a native Viennese and, therefore, we would like to invite you...
...Heinrich Weiss, received his doctorate from the University of Vienna...
...Wings of the Dove," MOMENT, November 1976...
...That a Jew might harbor "any hard feelings" is a wildly inappropriate understatement...
...This time, Weiss refused to attend a conference of "Old Austrian" immunologists, to be held in Vienna on the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss—the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938...
...Josef Smolen, Secretary Dr...
...David Weiss Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School Jerusalem, Israel Dear Dr...
...Neustadt and Frau Rosa Nassau of Vienna—who were among the very, very few Austrians who showed decency to their Jewish compatriots after the Anschluss, and who extended help to our family...
...The Waldheim affair was certainly an occasion where latent anti-Semitism became overt...
...Thirteen years later, Weiss, one of the world's leading research investigators in cancer and immunology, reaffirmed his conviction...
...Judy was shopping one Friday morning at the supermarket across from the Kings Hotel m Jerusalem with my son Joshua...
...The Holocaust of the Jewish people is a unique blackness, even against the background of man's prevalent inhumanity to man...
...We hope that our proposal meets your agreement and you will give us the honor of your participation...
...after the Anschluss, even local Gestapo and SS personnel advised my father to remain, to wait it out, "the good Jews would not be harmed...
...Nobody is good or bad because he is a Jew, Catholic, Moslem, Austrian, Russian, American or whatever...
...In this exchange of letters with Othmar Forster, professor of experimental pathology at the University of Vienna and chairman of the Austrian Society of Allergy and Immunology, Weiss explained why he would not attend...
...I deeply regret your decision not to accept our invitation to participate in a meeting of "Old Austrian" immunologists organized by the Austrian Society of Allergy and Immunology...
...That is self-evident...
...and he [Dr...
...Josef Smolen, Secretary Austrian Society for Allergy and Immunology Wien, Austria Dear Drs...
...On one of these days we would like to arrange for a scientific symposium at which each of the invited scientists will give a lecture about his or her own scientific achievements...
...We are now educating a new generation of young people who have not had any personal experience with the Hitler regime...
...Of course, we will also cover your travel expenses...
...I do not know your past, I do not know your own inclinations...
...Pride in belonging to a people that has been the object of murderousness because it has insisted on casting light into the world, because it has paved the way to social progress, because it is tough and indestructible, because it has contributed so much to make cities like Vienna the centers of art, music and science that they were before the murderousness was released into action...
...I must address myself, too, to some of the specific remarks in your letters...
...Forster and Smolen: Thank you for your letter of June 11, and for your kind invitation to participate in the meeting of "Old Austrian" immunologists which you are planning for June 1988...
...After the Anschluss, the Weiss family feared that their established positions in Austrian society were no protection against the hatred unloosed by the German occupation...
...My first visit to Israel in 1965 directly followed a visit to the Soviet Union...
...The Austrian Society of Allergy and Immunology has, therefore, decided to take this occasion to organize a meeting of "Old Austrian" immunologists, most if not all of them Viennese...
...David Weiss was born in Austria in 1927...
...Polten and Vienna itself...
...But let us talk about the present and the future, not the past...
...To now accept the hospitality of an Austrian organization—I would consider that a betrayal of the memory of my six million dead, and an abdication from any sense of personal integrity...
...I, too, am deeply concerned with the present and the future—that is one reason, not the only one, why I cannot turn my back on the past...
...It is that pride, too, that makes me shun any further presence in what was once my homeland...
...The Significance of Gestures A Prominent Israeli Scientist Explains Why He Won't Go to _Austria DAVID W. WEISS "/ believe in the significance of gestures," David Weiss wrote on his first visit to the Soviet Union* "One doesn't take grapes from vineyards which abuse their workers, nor purchase goods from countries with fascist regimes...
...If the annihilation of European Jewry is to be permitted to slip into oblivion as a landmark in history, that permission would make a terrifying statement: What happened is not, really, all that shocking...
...All my cousin saw was the flash and the smoke and the screaming and two dead women being carried out He thought one of them was my wife I rushed home and found my wife and son scorched but unharmed...
...My parents themselves were respected in the town, that is true...
...the widow of Hofmaler Kohn survived the Theresienstadt Ghetto...
...I could have joined a moshavor a kibbutz or taught biology in a high school...
...It was a calculated policy, involving at all levels every sector of the German-Austrian society—its technocrats, scientists, judges, physicians, industrialists—and executed over many years with an unprecedented refinement of organization...
...We also hope to arrange an evening at the Opera, a banquet at the Vienna Rathaus and other cultural and social events...
...That I know personally from my two previous visits to the exceptional gentile ladies who acted against the stream...
...Not to talk of the past is a tacit acquiescence, a having come to peace with it...
...Nineteen eighty-eight will be a year for Austrians to remember these sad days and the terrible years that followed, and particularly, the victims of these days...
...I shall not tread on Austrian soil again, and in telling you why, I emphasize that my remarks are not directed personally...
...And then she saw this cousin of mine at the far end of the store He waved to her and she moved towards him with my little boy...
...you can find reference to Maler Kohn in a book that appeared some years ago, Der Alte Kaiser, by Eugen Ketterl...
...Precisely because it was the people of Mozart and of Beethoven, of Goethe and of Schiller, that could embark on this barbarity in the middle of the 20th century, with the enthusiastic cooperation of other surrounding peoples and the essential indifference of the rest of the world—precisely because of this awesome concatenation—the Holocaust is a point of departure in human history...
...My maternal grandfather was Kaiserlich-Koniglicher Hofmaler [court portraitist by appointment to His Majesty the Emperor], Professor David Kohn...
...But your invitation is not a personal one...
...Not all of those people are anti-Semites...
...As it happened, I was offered an academic position at Hebrew University...
...A personal friendship developed between him and Kaiser Franz Joseph...
...But can you tell me a country where such is not...
...Today, that earth still cries out for the innocent blood spilled on it...
...Yes, there are anti-Semitism, racism, fascism, criminality of many sorts to be found in every nation and people...
...The purpose on all three occasions was to visit with two Catholic ladies—Frau Hermine Gneist of Wr...
...Smolen] was born in Israel...
...With best regards...
...I was working in my office...
...they were considered to fall within that ill-defined small category of "good" Jews, "die weissen Juden" [literally, "white Jews...
...Weiss: During the Sixth International Congress of Immunology in Toronto the idea was born to arrange a meeting in Vienna of immunologists who are native Austrians and have made their careers abroad...
...Should I enjoy the hospitality of Russia, where basic human rights seem to have so little currency, and my own people are oppressed...
...What had happened was this She had been standing at the meat counter-where it turned out a bomb was hidden on one of the shelves—next to two women about her own age ail three were wearing similar clothes...
...She is a stubborn lady If they were going to try to blow her out of the country, she was not about to go along with the attempt I made aliyah through the miasma of fear in the Soviet Union, she through the smoke and debris of an exploding bomb...
...My experiences as a child in Austria— Vienna, July 9, 1987 Dr...
...I applaud your intention...
...D.1 Kft Indeed, I am convinced that the mounting, unabashed brutality throughout the world in the decades following the Holocaust owes much to its implicit and unique message: In advanced civilizations, murderous nations will murder on an immense scale, while less murderous ones will stand by and close their eyes and doors because human life is an expendable commodity and business must proceed as usual...
...She was thrown down by the blast and parts of the ceiling came down...
...The person is born, morally, tabula rasa...
...more power to you...
...However, perhaps after reading my letter and contemplating it, you might change your opinion and help us in our endeavors...
...To keep the memory saliently alive is to struggle for a better future, not only for Jews but for all humanity...
...And the definition of its targets by genes—a Jewish grandmother—was unprecedented not only in its insanity, but also in the ruthlessness of its inclusivity: No service to the State, no Iron Cross, no baptismal certificate, no plea for exemption intervened between the victims and death...
...I could not make it shorter...
...I apologize for this lengthy statement which should explain to you my personal thinking and intentions...
...instead, Austria has hidden behind the fiction of being a victim of Nazism, not its handmaiden...
...Forster: It is with appreciation that I acknowledge your thoughtful reply of July 9 to my previous letter...
...With best regards, Yours sincerely, Dr...
...After the Anschluss, the population as a whole, with pitifully few exceptions, enthusiastically joined the orgy of violence and degradation to which Jews were subjected...
...Austria was as criminal as Germany— more so in terms of membership in the SS, Gestapo, Sonder-kommandos and Einsatz-kommandos...
...I was shocked at the situation of the Jews, I'd had no idea how bad the situation was...
...Josef Smolen, Secretary of our Society and my personal friend, is [the] son of Jewish parents who had also to flee from Hitler...
...His family roots were sunk deep within the Austrian soil, their presence marked by distinguished titles and achievements and by military honors...
...Even Austrians who were not politically National Socialists distinguished themselves as participants in the exclusion, and then the systematic murder, of the Jewish population of Austria and all of German-occupied Europe...
...But there is such a thing as the responsibility of the collective...
...I do not impute personal guilt to the individual for crimes committed by the group of which he is a member...
...Both these marvelous ladies have died in recent years...
...Othmar Forster Professor of Experimental Pathology Chairman, Austrian Society of Allergy and Immunology Wien, Austria Dear Dr...
...Its extent was unprecedented...
...I supported Israel, but Zion exerted no direct pull on me And I was happy in California...
...And also a great deal of pride...
...Othmar Forster, President Dr...
...Collectively, Austria was as criminal an entity as Germany, more so in terms of its representation in the persecution of Jews, membership in the SS, Gestapo, the Sonderkommandos and the Einsatz-kommandos...
...it i§ only one other paragraph in the dark saga of mankind...
...I proceeded to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot where I had been invited to present several lectures in cancer biology and immunology...
...I can do this so much more as my own father was fired from his job after the Anschluss as an opponent of the Nazis and my later father-in-law was taken to the Dachau concentration camp...
...Clearly...
...among his decorations was the Iron Cross...
...I think it is our obligation to show them how people of different belief, race or political credo can not only live together and tolerate each other, but perhaps be friends...
...I walked off the El Al plane onto Israeli sal thinking about the atmosphere of terror in which Jews Irved in the Soviet Union...
...We have chosen June 1, 1988, a day which falls into the Vienna festivals and which will provide a nice framework for such an occasion...
...Therefore, it was our intention to demonstrate what disaster racial, religious or political prejudice can cause by organizing a meeting of people from our own field, immunology, who had to leave Austria in 1938 as victims of such prejudice, and who became famous scientists abroad...
...And I end by extending to you, personally, a warm invitation to visit me and my family in our home in Jerusalem, whenever your travels may bring you to this phoenix nation...
...My wife, Judy, went along very reluctantly...
...The Holocaust was not just one other outburst of barbarism, inflamed passions, dehumanization in the course of a war...
...I trust that we are working toward the same end, and as a new record may begin to be written— it is only a beginning now—my children and yours may one day be able to meet on Austrian soil...
...Eleven-year-old David left Austria for the United States in 1939 and remained there until 1966, when he and his American wife decided to make their home in Israel...
...My son pulled a shopping cart over them when he fell and it protected them from the falling stone and plaster...
...Vienna, June 11, 1987 Dr...
...the Berkeley hills, where I live, have no organic meaning to me...
...He served as Fedlrabbiner [field chaplain] with the rank of Hauptmann [captain] for four years on the Eastern Front during World War I in a Honved Hussar [cavalry] regiment...
...Because she had moved a few steps, a pillar was between her and the explosion when the device went off...
...We are now educating a new generation of young people...
...Professor and Chairman In the spring of 1938 we had to flee for our lives...
...The consequence of that "peace" can only be more horror down the years, without even a ripple of shuddering...
...True, there were Italian and Danish and Bulgarian murderers, but the national record of these countries during the years of night was very different...
...The feelings I harbor are implacable contempt and animosity for the German-Austrian collective entity...
...The year of 1988 offers an excellent opportunity for such a meeting since this year will be the 50th anniversary of the day when Austria w.as annihilated as an independent country and occupied by Nazi Germany...
...it overwhelmingly chose to merge into the German fascist entity...
...Every collective discrimination is bad and the origin of all evil...
...Weiss: Thank you for your letter of July 1, 1987...
...In our Society, I do not know anyone—and amongst the members of the council of the Society many have Jewish friends in Israel, in the USA and elsewhere in the world—[who is anti-Semitic...
...Neustadt—were beclouded by the ambience of pronounced native anti-Semitism...
...He was then Oberrabbiner [chief rabbi] of Wr...
...rather, it is in the name of an Austrian organization, and I do not care to have any relationship or contact, of any sort, with any collective Austrian entity...
...But not Mauthausens [an Austrian concentration camp] and their shameless acceptance during and after the fact...
...As I drove from Rehovot to Jerusalem, I thought to myself: On these hills my ancestors tended their flocks of sheep and goats...
...is as yet a possibility...
...I can fully appreciate any hard feelings a Jew might have against a country from which he was expelled and in which so many of his friends and relatives had to suffer terrible tortures or were brutally murdered...
...As an Austrian of sensibility and good will, that is your mandate...
...This is not to neglect the fact that there is anti-Semitism in Austria...
...specifically, in Wr...
...Myself, I was too young to make at that time any meaningful decisions on my own, but I was brought up in an atmosphere of opposition against Nazis and their mentality...
...A great thinker of the 17th century said that salvation lies with remembrance...
...That is why I have no hesitation in finding myself a guest in those countries...
...Smolen, I am Sincerely, David W. Weiss, Ph.D., D.Phil.Med, D.ScfHon...
...Your father and your wife's father suffered for their opposition to Nazism (I hope that your father-in-law survived Dachau and is well) and not because of the inescapable stigma of race that the National Socialists placed on Jews...
...But a year or so after we had settled in Jerusalem, she had an experience that transformed her into an Israeli...
...Professor and Chairman '8...
...You write that it was your "intention to demonstrate what disaster racial, religious and political prejudice can cause, by organizing a meeting of people from our field . . . who had to leave Austria in 1938 as victims of such prejudice...
...If you, despite these arguments, feel unable to accept our invitation to come to Vienna in 1988, for our meeting, I have to appreciate your decision...
...the record is not written for him but by him, by his free choice...
...I, too, apologize for the length of this statement...
...In this point I disagree with you and I think your interpretation of current events in Austria is wrong...
...In fact, the hysterical anti-Jewish excesses committed by Austrians in Austria in the days and weeks and months after the Anschluss gave Nazism a green light toward the Final Solution: No holds were now barred...
...I had come to the USSR for several weeks at the invitation of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences I spent much of my time, however, trying to make contact with Jews...
...My mother's people had lived for over five centuries in the Waldviertel, Tulln, St...
...and your spouse to participate in this meeting and to be our guests for a few days...
...Forget-fulness of what has transpired, for good or for evil, condemns human beings to start afresh in each generation, with no guidelines deriving from experience...
...She had gone down to the Ministry of the interior to take out Israel citizenship "When are you going to get yours...
...I fully agree with you: Human beings are not good or bad because of their birth into any particular group, national, racial or religious...
...Waldheim was not elected because he was accused of war crimes but rather because many people felt that the accusations were unjustified and only brought up for tactical reasons to hurt his campaign...
...I met with people at various universities...
...Othmar Forster Professor of Experimental Pathology University of Vienna Chairman, Osterreichische Gesellschaft fur Allergologie und Immunologie Israel, July 29, 1987 Dr...
...I disavow the concept of collective guilt and punishment...
...You feel that anti-Semitism is still prevalent in Austria and you take the election of Dr...
...I think that one of our main tasks is to eliminate prejudice...
...I David Weiss began asking whether anybody was perhaps looking for an immunotogist...
...I still have a collection of their correspondence...
...David W. Weiss Professor and Chairman The Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School Jerusalem, Israel Dear Dr...
...My father's family resided in Pressburg from the early 1700s...
...I do not want to argue about its frequency, but I am convinced that it is a small—albeit very loud and arrogant—minority...
...Waldheim as proof...
...The sudden juxtaposition of being in a free Jewish state one moment, only moments earlier having left Jewish communities in the Soviet Union that were living in constant, acute fear, may have started me on the road to atiyah...
...That is amply evident, too, in the fact that Austria as a whole has refused—and much more so than Germany itself—to shoulder responsibility, even acknowledgment, for what was done to its Jewish citizens...
...First of all, I say in the Austrian idiom that I remember as a salutation of respect, "Ich habe die Ehre" [I am honored] to have made your acquaintance, if only in writing...
...Othmar Forster, President Osterreichische Gesellschaft fur Allergologie und Immunologic Israel, July 1, 1987 Dr...
...It is a mark of honor to be singled out for enmity because of one's convictions...
...My wife was very much alive, and quite as ornery as ever Two or three days later, when I came home from work, she had a funny look on her face and she held a piece of paper in her hand...
...My father, Professor Dr...
...With best regards and good wishes to you and to Dr...
...Its doing by the technically, scientifically and culturally most advanced nation in the world was unprecedented...
...most of the rest of my family were gassed in Sobibor and Maidanek...
...And today, recent events—particularly the unquestioning support given to [President Kurt] Waldheim who stands accused of involvement in most serious crimes against humanity—evidence only too clearly that Austrians on the whole retain their virulent prejudice, have learned nothing, shoulder no responsibility and have no regrets...
...Collectively, this was not the case for some other countries occupied by the German-Austrian armies: Italy, Denmark, Bulgaria...
...How I Made Aliyah l had never been an active Zionist I had always believed that a Jew is obligated to be, and can be, vibrantly Jewish in whatever place he finds himself...
...Austria did not, in 1938, suffer "annihilation of its independence" by an invader...
...Neustadt (where I was raised) and Neunkirchen, and a member of the Landesschulrat [ministry of education] of Nieder-Osterreich...
...Mine, as a Jew, is to keep memory alive, and I must do that by denying, in whatever way I can, that a normalcy of interaction between Jews and Austria (not"individual Austrians...
...Until then, I had never even visited the country...
...Sincerely yours, Dr...
...Yes, I do indeed qualify as a native Austrian...
...Sincerely yours, David W. Weiss, Ph.D., D.Phil.Med., D.Sc.(Hon...
...In retaliation, some people turned against those who accused Waldheim—[who] accidentally [happened to be] representatives of the Jewish World Congress...
...she asked...
Vol. 14 • March 1989 • No. 2
