Wine and Ashes

[Manda]

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A P R I L, 1 9 3 8 : V I E N N A, A U S T R I A
The city is still reeling from the drastic changes that started only a month
before when the Austrian Anschluss made the country one with its
neighboring country of Germany under the rule of Adolf Hitler. For some the
flowers of spring seem even more vibrant than ever before and the city is
alright with the hope of a new and liberating regime. Nazi flags still line the
streets through which the invading wehrmacht marched amid crowds of
jubilant civilians, welcoming them as saviors with smiles and cheers. The
steady flow of incoming German soldiers are still feeling the love, especially
from many of the lovely single women of Vienna as their Austrian
counterparts deal optimistically with the struggle of integrating into the
German wehrmacht. It’s still an adjustment for everyone involved. However,
for these hopeful citizens, life is good.

For others, however, a dark shadow has enveloped the city that they call
home as the hand of oppression, that of the very saviors that their fellow
citizens have welcomed with open arms, presses down upon them. In just
one, short month, it has torn apart the lives that it has taken them generations
to build. There are mass arrests of all those who are suspected of opposing
the views of the Third Reich, and the thousands of Jews in the city suddenly
find themselves stripped of their citizenship, publicly humiliated and banned
from many businesses while their own are broken into and vandalized.
People scramble in droves to escape the country before things get any worse
while others go underground and resist this sanctioned invasion in any way
that they can.

In this chaotic new world of contradictions and quickly diverging realities, on
which side will you fall?