The term "assimilation" describes a process of change, when a person or a group of people assimilate, they adopt the lifestyle, customs, practices and attitudes of another group. Around 1900, many Jewish people living in Vienna had migrated from other regions or countries to the Austrian capital, while some had been living in the city for decades. Some Jews assimilated but others did not. Assimilation can concern a variety of aspects of life: language, identity, customs, morals, relationships, and so on.
You will now watch clips of testimonies of Jewish survivors, who were born in the 2nd district and recall the extent of their families’ assimilation into Viennese society.
Ingeborg Susanne Guttmann was born in 1930 and grew up in the 2nd district. Her Jewish assimilated family was living in comfortable conditions. In 1939 they managed to escape to Shanghai where they lived in poverty in a ghetto. Guttmann’s family intended to emigrate to the USA, but in 1949 they were forced to return to Austria. A change in legislation meant that they were no longer stateless, but Austrian citizens again. Her husband introduced Guttmann to orthodox Judaism in the 1950s.
Henriette "Rita" Koch was born in 1931 into a liberal-Jewish, wealthy family. She grew up in the 2nd district where she went to school before fleeing to Italy with her family in 1939. In Italy Koch became a Zionist and her family emigrated to Palestine in 1944. In 1950 Koch came back to Vienna without her parents. She worked for the Jewish Agency, studied and became a translator. Later she worked for the Austrian government and was involved in the Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Vienna. She was a renowned journalist.
Gisela "Gundl" Herrnstadt-Steinmetz was born in 1916 in Vienna and grew up in a social democratic family, in an assimilated environment. She moved to Paris in 1935 and became a member of the French communist party. From 1937 onwards she worked as a nurse in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939 she went to Belgium where she lived under an alias and together with her fiancé she was fighting in the Belgian resistance movement. Later she returned to Vienna in 1945, went to university and worked as an editor and translator.
All three interviews were conducted by the USC Shoah Foundation in Vienna in 1997.