The Amazing Truth about Hitler's Kidnaping of Baron Rothschild

April 1, 1938 was a fateful day for many Austrians. Arrested immediately after the “Anschluss” and in Gestapo custody, they were then taken on the first transport to the Dachau concentration camp. The group of 151 people consisted of well-known politicians, opponents of the National Socialist regime, Christian Socialists, monarchists, social democrats and communists. About a third of them were of Jewish religion or descent. The first transport included Vienna's corporate state mayor Richard Schmitz, the illegal SP functionary Franz Olah, the writers Raoul Auernheimer and Heinrich Jacob, the librettist Fritz Löhner-Beda, his colleague Fritz Grünbaum, as well as Princes Max and Ernst von Hohenberg and Leopold Figl (see “The World Until Yesterday” from March 16).