14 | JANUARY 7 • 2021

continued from page 13

Marcel watched Hitler implement
increasingly antisemitic policies in
Germany. He watched Nazism gain traction
among Vienna’s passively antisemitic youth.
In some instances, Marcel’s reporting was
fearless. He mentioned two Austrian report-
ers critical of Hitler whom the Germans
“silenced.
” He was the first to report an
attempted bombing of a Catholic event that
the police had traced to Austrian Nazis.
Most notably, Marcel predicted Hitler’s
desire to take Austria. “It is on the attitude
of the Schuschnigg’s government and the
moral support to be found in the great
European democracies that Austria’s fate
will depend,
” Marcel predicted.
Marcel’s last article was from Jan.
20, 1938. On March 12 of that year,
Schuschnigg’s government fell to the Nazis.
Under the German Anschluss (annexation),
Jewish reporters were banned from the
press; Jews like Otto had their livelihoods
and eventually their lives taken away.
A headline in the March 14 edition of

L
’Indépendance Belge suggested Marcel’s fate.
“The German authorities now control the
Austrian finances, press and radio.
”
Kurt Schuschnigg, the betrayer of
Marcel’s hopes, fled to Hungary. He would
spend years in concentration camps before
eventually becoming an academic and liv-
ing out his years in America.

HIDING FROM THE NAZIS
A few weeks after the Anschluss, Otto
approached his apartment to the sound of
his mother’s pleading voice. Opposite her
were three young men with Nazi armbands.
The ringleader of the group stepped for-
ward. “Where’s Otto Schirn?” he asked. “We
need to speak with him.
”
Otto’s mother learned that the three men
didn’t know the family was Jewish. They
had learned something far more dangerous:
the true identity of Marcel Legrand.
As Otto waited outside the doorway, he
heard his mother speak. Forty years later,
in a tape, Otto’s voice cracked as he remem-

bered what his mother said.
“Please, please don’t do anything to my
son,
” she begged. “He has nothing to do
with what you want.
”
As Otto waited outside the apartment, his
mom bribed the Nazis to leave Otto alone.
She smuggled him to his uncle’s apartment
that same evening.
Otto received word while still in hiding
that both his real name and his pen name
had been placed on the Nazi blacklist. The
Nazis never learned Otto was Jewish — but
because of his reporting, they considered
him an enemy of the state.
When Otto’s editors learned of this dan-
ger, they arranged for a Belgian tourist bus
carrying a false passport to meet Otto in
Cologne, Germany. After a hair-raising
train ride from Austria to Germany, Otto
was smuggled out of the Third Reich.

EUROPE IN DARKNESS
In Brussels, Otto became the secretary gen-
eral of the Conseil des Associations Juives

IN
THE
JEWS D
ON THE COVER

Sammy Sussman,

center, with his family

reading some of Otto’s

journalistic

work.

COURTESY OF REBECCA SUSSMAN