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

