Vienna Prelude is the first book of the Zion Covenant historical fiction series by Bodie and Brock Thoene. [1] It won the ECPA Gold Medallion Award after being published in 2005. [2]
Elisa Lindheim, a Jewish/German musician has helplessly stood by as her rights as a Jew are slowly taken away. When she and her family attempt to leave their homeland of Germany to take refuge in Austria, her Jewish father is arrested and held for ransom by the notorious Gestapo. As Hitler's noose draws tighter around the Jews, Elisa must seek the help of handsome American journalist, John Murphy. Together they must find her father and find a way to get him out of Germany to safety. [3]
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
Otto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher who lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter, which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23. Parts of his work were adapted for use by the Nazi regime. Weininger was a strong influence on Ludwig Wittgenstein, August Strindberg, Julius Evola, and, via his lesser-known work Über die letzten Dinge, on James Joyce.
The Star of David, known in Hebrew as Magen David, is a generally-recognized symbol of Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram, the compound of two equilateral triangles.
Yellow badges, also referred to as Jewish badges, are badges that Jews were ordered to wear at various times during the Middle Ages by some caliphates, at various times during the Medieval and early modern period by some European powers, and from 1939–1945 by the Axis powers. The badges served to mark the wearer as a religious or ethnic outsider, and often served as a badge of shame.
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born Jewish-American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding father of Holocaust Studies and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opusThe Destruction of the European Jews is regarded as seminal for research into the Nazi Final Solution.
The history of the Jews in Austria probably begins with the exodus of Jews from Judea under Roman occupation. Over the course of many centuries, the political status of the community rose and fell many times: during certain periods, the Jewish community prospered and enjoyed political equality, and during other periods it suffered pogroms, deportations to concentration camps and mass murder, and antisemitism. The Holocaust drastically reduced the Jewish community in Austria and only 8,140 Jews remained in Austria according to the 2001 census, though other estimates place the current figure at 9,000, 15,000, or 20,000 people, if accounting for those of mixed descent.
Robert Solomon Wistrich was the Erich Neuberger Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the head of the University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism. Wistrich was one of the world's best-known scholars of antisemitism.
Theodor Herzl or Hebrew name given at his brit milah Binyamin Ze'ev, was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state.
Anton Schmid was an Austrian recruit in the Wehrmacht who saved Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania. A devout but apolitical Roman Catholic and an electrician by profession, Schmid was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and later into the Wehrmacht during World War II. Put in charge of an office to return stranded German soldiers to their units in late August 1941, he began to help Jews after being approached by two pleading for his intercession. Schmid hid Jews in his apartment, obtained work permits to save Jews from the Ponary massacre, transferred Jews in Wehrmacht trucks to safer locations, and aided the Vilna Ghetto underground. It is estimated that he saved as many as 300 Jews before his arrest in January 1942. He was executed on 13 April.
Since Biblical times, music has held an important role in many Jews' lives. Jewish music has been influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. Jewish musical contributions on the other hand tend to reflect the cultures of the countries in which Jews live, the most notable examples being classical and popular music in the United States and Europe. However, other music is unique to particular Jewish communities, such as klezmer of Eastern Europe.
The Holocaust in Ukraine took place in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the General Government, Crimean General Government and some areas under military control to the East of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, in the Transnistria Governorate and Northern Bukovina and Carpathian Ruthenia in World War II. The listed areas are today part of Ukraine. Between 1941 and 1944, more than a million Jews living in the Soviet Union were murdered by Nazi Germany's "Final Solution" extermination policies. Most of them were killed in Ukraine because most pre-WWII Soviet Jews lived in the Pale of Settlement, of which Ukraine was the biggest part.
The anti-Nazi boycott was an international boycott of German products in response to violence and harassment by members of Hitler's Nazi Party against Jews following his appointment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Examples of Nazi violence and harassment included placing and throwing stink bombs, picketing, shopper intimidation, humiliation and assaults. The boycott was spearheaded by some Jewish organizations but opposed by others.
The history of the Jews in Vienna, Austria, goes back over eight hundred years. There is evidence of a Jewish presence in Vienna from the 12th century onwards.
Events in the year 1938 in Germany.
Amon Leopold Göth was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II.
Anti-Jewish boycotts are organized boycotts directed against Jewish people to exclude them economical, political or cultural life. Antisemitic boycotts are often regarded as a manifestation of popular antisemitism.
A Friendship in Vienna is a 1988 Disney Channel film based on Doris Orgel's popular children's book The Devil in Vienna. The film starred Jane Alexander, Stephen Macht and Edward Asner and premiered on August 27, 1988.
The Holocaust in Austria was the systematic persecution, plunder and extermination of Jews by German and Austrian Nazis from 1938 to 1945. An estimated 65,000 Jews were murdered and 125,000 forced to flee Austria as refugees.