as an officer of the Austro-Hungary's army on the Romanian front. After the war, when he was honored with two military diplomas for exemplary behavior, he returned to his old profession. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Morgenstern soon became the target of the anti-Semitic policy of the National Socialists. After the Kristallnacht, his business was closed by the authorities, and on 24 November 1938, it was "aryanized", i.e. Morgenstern was forced to sell it to an Aryan. However, the purchase price of 620 Reichsmark for workshop, shop and an extensive warehouse was never paid. Morgenstern was also deprived of his license to practice his trade; he was banned from working. In the following months, he depended on public generosity. Morgenstern wrote a letter to his former associate, Hitler, on 10 August 1939 addressed to "His Excellency the Chancellor and leader of the German Reich". It was apparently intercepted by bureaucrats as it has markings, such as underlines and "Jew!" added to the margin. In his letter, Morgenstern asked that the authorities, in exchange for the transfer of his landed property, pay compensation for the confiscation of his property (in foreign currency, so that he could emigrate). The letter went unanswered. Morgenstern could not leave the Nazi sphere of power because he could not afford travel expenses and the Reich Flight Tax. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the Morgensterns were expropriated and deported as Jews to the occupied Poland, where they were imprisoned in the Łódź Ghetto. There Samuel Morgenstern died of wasting in August 1943. He was buried in the ghetto cemetery. His wife, Emma, who, as her brother-in-law Wilhelm Abeles (who also lived in the ghetto and survived Auschwitz) witnessed her husband's death, was most likely deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp at the same month. Since it was a standard practice in Auschwitz to send most newcomers, especially old women unable to work, directly to the gas chambers, their death can be considered certain. Accordingly, a Viennese court ruled in December 1946 that they could not have survived to the end of the war and pronounced them dead, in agreement with a motion filed by their brother Max Pragan. Hitler's antisemitism Some scholars argue that Hitler was not a pronounced anti-Semite during his time in Vienna (despite his enthusiastic Pan-German League attitude). As evidence for this, they state that young Hitler not