[L] Do you remember your mother going to the workers' olympiad in Vienna?
Very clearly. The main train station, a beautiful train covered in red flags,
everyone wearing blue shirts and red ties.
That was the workers' olympics.
I don't remember which year that was, it must have been before the Anschluss, 1936, maybe.
My mother said, 'Marek, come with me, this is the last time you'll ever see socialism.'
I was at the train station, I could have gone, I was still under-age
so I didn't need a passport or perhaps I was included in my mother's passport.
So I said, 'You know what, mother? I won't go, I'll go to summer camp with my friends.'
That was so stupid of me, I didn't go to Vienna.
Apart from everything else, that was the last expression of freedom
because then came the uprising in Vienna, those battles in Karl-Marx-Stadthof.
I was looking at this now after the war and they really did build a fortress,
small windows, not barred any more, arrow slits on the roof, a huge edifice, thick walls,
they fought there for, oh, two weeks
against the Austrian government which was pro-German.
And they lost.
Their symbol was three arrows:
we want... in German is goes like this - we want to set the world free.
What did these three arrows want?
The three arrows were: the first, freedom, the second, I can't remember what, the third, justice.
I don't remember what the second arrow was for.
Everyone who supported this wore...
all the progressive people in Warsaw wore these badges, a circle and three arrows.
That meant you supported that Austrian thing.
That's when there were these songs.
Friedrich, Weissel, Munichreiser - they were the leaders of that uprising.
When it collapsed, they tried to escape to the Czechs.
The Austrians killed two of them on the border
and one got across.
And Otto Bauer, who was the Czech social democrat leader,
was a left-wing social democrat,
and was, so to speak, on the same wavelength as members of the Bund Party
and I think he managed to leave Austria.
Or perhaps he was dead by then.
In any event, Bund had a particular liking for Austria
because people there were left-wing, progressive, national minorities had a place there.
Superficially, anti-Semitism wasn't...
later on, it transpired that the Austrians were the worst swine,
because notice that everyone, almost every commandant of the concentration camps was an Austrian.
In Auschwitz... I don't want to list them because it upsets me.
Anyway, this anti-Semitic propaganda in Austria,
where there had been no de-Nazification had never eradicated this anti-Semitism even from the children.
Because grannies would tell...
Did I not tell you about the time that Austrian came to see me,
the one who brought wine, his child and wife, who was a school headmaster?
Why are you nodding your head? I haven't told you? [L] Tell us.
I haven't told you? [L] If you know it, then I listen.
You're boring.
There was no de-Nazification there.
The Austrians immediately put themselves in the same situation
the Germans want to adopt today, as victims of war, that they were annexed.
But I have to say that there wasn't any other place that showed as much enthusiasm
for Hitler and for the Anschluss as Austria.
I remember watching the news chronicles before the film shows in the cinema,
so I saw this in the news chronicles.
In Germany there wasn't as much enthusiasm as there was there.
The Austrians are obviously weaklings
and they liked grosse Deutschland very much,
so that's what happened and they went for full co-operation.
Hitler killed Dollfuss, who wanted a bit of freedom for himself but didn't get it,
while the whole of Austria backed Hitler.