Two Witnesses’ Testimony. Long Lost Manuscripts from 1938: Vienna – Dachau – Buchenwald

The sports journalist Maximilian Reich was arrested on March 17, 1938 in Vienna and sent to the concentration camp in Dachau with the so-called “Transport of the Prominent” (Prominententransport) on the first of April. Reich was one of 151 men: among them were former ministers of state, judges, two men who later became Federal Chancellors, Jewish journalists, writers and artists. While Reich was struggling to survive the ordeal both in Dachau and later in Buchenwald, his “Aryan” wife Emilie in Vienna was leading the battle to gain his release as well as to get permission for the family to emigrate.
The complementary accounts of Max and Emilie Reich are in all probability the first reports written by Austrian victims of National Socialism. In their capacity to amplify and clarify each other, the dual points of view of husband and wife form a uniquely enriched portrait of the times and events. Henriette Mandl not only rescued the manuscripts of her parents from obscurity but edited them for publication and contributed her own short commentary as well.
With an essay by Wolfgang Neugebauer about the First Transport of Austrians to the Concentration Camp at Dachau.