December 3,1947

I came back from Vienna yesterday and am very glad that I could go. Vienna was a most agreeable surprise to me. I had not seen it for two years, the last time being Christmas of 1945. I could hardly believe my eyes. It is very different from Germany. One can see repaired houses everywhere, people are working, they do not look starved, and are well clad. The country is far from normal, but the progress made is great, unlike Germany where one has to spend all their spare time in getting a few additional rations in the black market. The American help is very great. 60% of all food consumed in the towns comes to Austria as free gift. All the people I visited had at least one warm room, and fair food. Very many people in Vienna get additional CARE packages as well. The   Opera is open, and the theaters are good. Prices are exorbitant, though. Just now they are converting their money to Schillings at a rate of 3:1. Everybody wants to buy as much as possible and get rid of the bad old Schillings. Consequently the shops are almost empty of goods and the shop owners refuse to sell anything. People pay debts to their enemies with the old Schillings, but not their friends. There are good jobs now and men and women who could not get any work before 1939, are in leading jobs now.Vienna is not what it used to be- the town is now without Jews, and somehow without culture. A new generation has come. My impression may be comparable to the one that one may have had in 1922, looking at Old Vienna of 1912. Perhaps it will be nice again- it certainly is interesting. Austria is the only country where the communists are losing ground, surrounded by communist dominated Eastern Europe. I felt strongly that I do not belong to Austria any more.

January, 1948

     Last week there was a bomb in our dining room in the Grand Hotel, which is our mess. I happened to be present when the thing went off; it was quite noisy. A big window was smashed but nobody was injured. I expect more trouble of that kind. It won't help them to get more food. But some stupid Nazis feel they have done something and so they rob cars, throw bombs and just try to stir up disorder. The bombs they dropped over London were rather more unpleasant. I shall be glad to be out of Germany, but not because I am scared, there is very little, so far, to be scared of. Bevin's speech and all it implicates is much worse. I am rather pessimistic concerning the general future of Europe. Conditions here are very bad. Yesterday the meat and fat ration was cancelled without warning and they won't get anything for the next two weeks.  The standards for decency and morality have disappeared. There is no German official who could not be bribed for a pound of coffee. In addition, the little food and goods which are available are badly distributed. Everybody tries to hoard whatever they can. The local shoe shop owner may have cement, or kitchen stoves which are urgently needed somewhere else.
     The Krupp's trial is at an interesting stage at the moment as most of the defending lawyers are in jail for contempt of court. I take it they will be released soon, but the whole atmosphere is rather strained. The other day two young Jewish girls came in as witnesses. They had been transferred from Auschwitz to a camp in Essen as slave workers and testified how they had been treated. Krupp did not use many concentration camp inmates, unlike IG Farben, who used many thousands. But the way these girls were treated was more than bad enough. Now they will go to the States, being DP's they have high priority, especially as they were born in what is now Russian territory. The trials are in my opinion too late in the game. Two years ago all this was necessary and important, today other problems overshadow the deeds of Krupp ( read more about Krupp) , Schnitzler (Read about Schnitzler here), and Flick.  ( Despite being found guilty in the Nuremberg Flick Trial, he quickly became one of West Germany's richest people by the 1950s and the largest shareholder of Daimler-Benz. He was awarded numerous honors, including the Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963 and the Bavarian Order of Merit, and was an honorary senator of the Technical University of Berlin. At the time of his death, his industrial conglomerate encompassed 330 companies and around 300,000 employees.   read more about flick here) and Darre (read about Darre here). Three years ago it would have been thrilling to read through all these secret and top secret documents, to see Krupp, Weizsaecker, Darre, Flick,  Hans Malzacher, Schmitz, and VerMeer and many other leading industrialists as witnesses or as defendants and to talk to them. But now I think it is outdated and new problems overshadow everything else.
     Vienna was a pleasant surprise for me. I had not been there for almost two years. I could compare the progress made in Austria with the stagnation in Germany and wit the misery which existed in Vienna in 1945. Certainly conditions are bad, but I did not see as many repaired houses in any German town. People in Vienna work again and not every conversation turn round black market or food in general. The American help is tremendous, of course, but I had the impression the Austrians are pulling their weight, whereas the Germans complain and work little or not at all. The Russian question overshadows everything else. Austria and Germany are terribly short of good people. All my old friends have high positions in government or industry now. They all hope that Russia will not interfere too much in Austria and that they will be able to rebuild an Austrian democracy. Germany seems to be in utter misery. People have lost all will and initiative for work. They spend their energies on acquiring a few bags of potatoes and a pair of shoes and blame the allies for their plight. They have completely forgotten that they started the war. The plight of the Eastern refugees is worst of all. They have nothing to trade with, no friends, no home, and very often no profession or knowlege. Mostly women and old people and children came from the Sudenten areas and the German East. The standards of decency and morality have disappeared as there is no German official who could not be bribed for a pound of coffee. In addition, the little food and goods which are available are badly distributed. Everyone tries to hoard whatever one can. The shoeshop may have stocks of cement, food, or kitchen stoves which are urgently needed somewhere else. Money can hardly buy anything except the official rations. . Factories trade in the "grey" market (goods for goods), whether the partner needs the goods is another question. Five tons of potatoes are not shipped in one rail car but 200 individuals with rucksacks spend two days to bring that amount back home, offering the farmers outraeous prices and filling two railroad cars with their bodies, wasting working time and energy. It is difficult to see how all this can be remedied. Only a big injection of money from the outside might do the trick. Communism does not gain much ground her. POW's returning from Russia tell their tales.

February, 1948

I finally received the good news that I will get my Visa. I have been waiting for this for almost three years!  I am planning to finish work here at the end of March and then, after a brief vacation in Italy, go to England and say good bye to my mother and the rest of my family. I will be sailing for the United States on May 7.
     I was in Vienna recently. Vienna has recovered very much indeed. The currency reform was a real success. Many goods are now available and the black market has lost and the Schilling has a recognized value.
     The political situation with the Czech crisis is a great shock. The plight of the Eastern refugees is worst of all. As Nuernberg is the nearest large town to the Czech border, refugees come here by the hundreds. No committees have been formed yet and millions of Sudeten German refugees, expelled by the Czechs a short time ago and living in camps all over the zone, doesn't make it easy for these Czechs to find friendly reception.

May 16, 1948

Well, this is America! I arrived May 13 at about noon. The trip was unexciting. The boat was neat and clean, but otherwise "Polnische wirtschaft" exists in communist Poland as much as ever. About half the passengers were British, the rest Danes and Poles. There was nobody interesting on the boat. I slept, ate and read most of the time. The weather was mostly cloudy, windy, and cold. The last morning, when we entered the harbor, the sun came out again and it was a grand spectacle to move slowly into the port, passing the statue of liberty and seeing all the skyscrapers, just as one has seen in pictures, but in reality more impressive.The immigration authorities did not take 30 seconds to check my papers, but the customs authorities were very exact and looked through every trunk and case and bag. That took almost an hour. Then I was released into America. Funny, I had no feeling of being in a strange place. When we went into a drugstore to have a cup of coffee I felt almost as if I were in the PX in Nuremberg. The latest American cars look exactly like those my friends had in Germany. The traffic is not denser than in London.

May 23, 1948

The first week in America has passed pretty quickly. I had to go three times to different parts of New York in order to get my boxes released from the customs people. I had sent part of my belongings directly to New York from Germany and a  case like mine has not existed before, where one is not coming as Germany immigrant, but the mail is sent from an APO address, but not from an American either and still the army had taken care of the transportation. But everything eventually got straightened out and I had not to pay a cent. I have not decided yet whether to change my name. I shall not do it while I am here in New York. Pollitzer does not seem to have the tinge it has in Europe. People here seem to have the impressions that it is a good old English name, except for Europeans, who know better.
     America is a wonderful country and California more than all the other states. The greatness, the speed, the lack of tradition, and the dimensions of everything are more than impressive.
     I went to the top of the Rockefeller building last night - a 72 story building. It is actually a group of seven or eight skyscrapers, all built between 1932-1937. During the day 150,000 people work there and they are almost a town on their own with a post office, hospital and station. There are roof gardens on the 50th and 70th floors, or whatever is the top of the various buildings. Midnight on Broadway in New York is remarkable: so much light! There are still so many people, there are shops that are still open, restaurants and drugstores crowded, millions of neon lights, cars, and buses. The sky scrapers are overwhelming in their mass, one would be impressive, but hundreds are more than astonishing. The shops on Fifth Avenue are not like anything I had seen in Paris or London or anywhere in prewar days. The shops are open as much at midnight as during the day. The port with the Queen Elisabeth and Mary are five minutes from the town centre. Lights and traffic and people are overwhelming. New York is much more beautiful than one would think. Water is everywhere. There is a beautiful beach just 25 minutes from the city where one can swim or sail. You can also go to the port which is close to the center of town and you can see the Queen Elizabeth and other big ships. I am staying in a hotel on the 21st floor and have a nice little room for $4.00/night. I get clean linens daily, a radio, a bath room with a shower with hot and cold water and iced water for drinking.

June 12, 1948

I had an opportunity to visit Washington. It is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. It is quite modern and very well planned and at times reminded me of Paris. There are huge office buildings, palaces would be a better description, and green squares wherever you look. The Potomac is not much smaller than the Thames, but is a friendly, well organized river with big reservoirs through it. The National Art Gallery is the best laid out museum you can imagine. It has perfect light conditions and air conditioning to keep the temperature and moisture the same all year. I didn't know they had so many first class paintings here in America.
     The trains here are marvelous- except they don't run on Sundays. All the windows are closed all the time but there is air conditioning which creates cool air. No matter how stuffy and hot it is outside, you feel just right as soon as you enter your compartment. I did decide to shorten my name and took the official papers already.

June 28, 1948

Pittsburgh is the dirtiest town I have ever seen in my life. It is dirty, hot and disagreeable and I should not like to live here if I can avoid it. I went to the Mellon Institute where many of the big companies have special fellowships for chemical and all kinds of industrial research problems. It is very well equipped and the building alone looks like a palace. I saw the university of Pittsburgh, called the cathedral of learning because it looks like a Gothic cathedral, but is a skyscraper at the same time. It is an amazing building. I have been offered a good job, but will try my luck in California.
     The country is full of convention news and everything else is pushed into the background. Europe seems to be getting worse, news from Vienna and Berlin is rather bad. I remain rather pessimistic, although certainly not for this year. People here have become rather anti-British, or more so than in the past. The Jewish question pays a big role in the news. In New York, in the Jewish parts, one could see posters to boycott England, English goods and denouncing England very strongly. I think myself that Britain behaved abominably, breaking all promises and forfeiting all the good will.