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Shoah Memorial also known as the Nameless Library stands in Judenplatz in the first district of Vienna. It is the central memorial for the Austrian victims of the Holocaust and was designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread. The tiles set into the ground around the memorial bear the names of the places where Austrian Jews lost their lives during the Nazi period.

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Commemorate the name of a Holocaust victim from Yad Vashem's Shoah Names Database

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Ruth Klüger was a Holocaust survivor and author from Vienna. In 1942, at the age of eleven, Klüger was deported to the concentration camp Theresienstadt together with her mother. They were later deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and eventually to Christianstadt, a satellite camp of Groß-Rosen in Silesia. After escaping the death march in February 1945, Ruth Klüger and her mother settled in Straubing (Bavaria) until their emigration to the United States in October 1947. She describes her childhood in the concentration camp in her memoir “Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered”. Klüger died last October at the age of 88.

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“When you arrive in camp with an idea for which you have fought earlier on and you see that this had made sense, you get some kind of moral support.”

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“When you arrive in camp with an idea for which you have fought earlier on and you see that this had made sense, you get some kind of moral support.”

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Boltežar (Cvetko) Kobal - Slovenia

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Elfriede Hartmann (21 May 1921 - 2 November 1943) was a Viennese engaged in anti-war resistance. She was executed by guillotine at the Vienna district court complex.

Source: Elfriede Hartmann - Wikipedia

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“The camp is a parody of our modern society, monstrous and pushed to the limit.“

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“The camp is a parody of our modern society, monstrous and pushed to the limit.“

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Jean Laurent Grey - France

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"I didn’t even know what politics meant.“

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"I didn’t even know what politics meant.“

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Nikola Jovanović - Serbia

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In Austria, Franz Jägerstätter was not recognized as a victim of political resistance because refusing to serve in the military is a criminal offense in all armies in the world.

The Catholic Church, despite turning away from him during his lifetime and collaborating with the Nazi regime, later declared him a martyr and beatified him. Like in other times during history, the Church stood on the side of the powerful and dictators, but later remembers more the resistance fighters rather than its own doings.

The life of Franz Jägerstätter was made into a film by American director Terrence Malick. "A Hidden Life" was released in 2020.

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A HIDDEN LIFE | Official Trailer [HD] | FOX Searchlight

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„Finally, we helped each other..., a group to exchange good news, to comfort...“

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„Finally, we helped each other..., a group to exchange good news, to comfort...“

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Paul Brusson - Belgium

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76 years ago, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet troops. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held every year to commemorate this event.

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SCI Austria’s silent exhibition is organised as a follow-up activity of the online laboratory "Smash Nazism" which was part of the transnational project "Nonviolent European Resistance Project". This project reflects on Nonviolent Resistance to Nazi-Fascism in Europe and is focused on stimulating people to actively engage in taking action against right-wing extremism and related forms of violence we are witnessing today.

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The memorial against war and fascism is a work by the Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka. It stays  as walk-in monument,  and it is intended to serve as a reminder of the darkest epoch in Austrian history. It is dedicated to all victims of war and fascism.  It represents the "Gate of Violence" with the bronze sculpture of the "kneeling Jew" brushing the street which . The memorial was commissioned by the city of Vienna and was installed on Albertinaplatz in Vienna's city centre on November 1988.

Source: Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance (memorialmuseums.org)

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Online collection of witness testimonies

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Online collection of witness testimonies

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The National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism  was established in 1995 to express Austria's special responsibility towards the victims of National Socialism. The National Fund carries out the academic research into National Socialism and the fates of its victims, provides acknowledgement, support and sponsors projects which benefit victims of National Socialism.
The National Found works on preservation of the memory of the victims and gathers data of people who fell victim to the Nazi regime for many different reasons. It displays the life stories of the victims of National Socialism. You can find the Online collection of eyewitness Testimonies here.

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The online collection documents recollections which have been provided to the National Fund by victims of National Socialism. Vivid photographic material and documents complement these testimonies.

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Collection - National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism

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The online collection documents recollections which have been provided to the National Fund by victims of National Socialism. Vivid photographic material and documents complement these testimonies.

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"People who had been friends suddenly became enemies. Overnight."

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"People who had been friends suddenly became enemies. Overnight."

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Leo Luster - Austria

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Holocaust Survivor Testimony: Leo Luster

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Leopoldine Kovarik (5 February 1919 – 2 November 1943) was a post office employee who lived and worked in a suburb in the south side of Vienna. After Austria was merged into Nazi Germany she became a resistance activist. During the Second World War she became a member of a group which used to write letters to members of the army encouraging them to desert. Aged 24, she was convicted under the usual charge of "preparing to commit high treason" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat") and guillotined at Vienna's regional penitentiary, which had incorporated its own execution chamber since the aftermath of the short-lived uprising of 1934.

Source: Leopoldine Kovarik - Wikipedia

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Elisabeth Jäger (born Morawitz, 25 September 1924 – 28 June 2019) was a committed anti-fascist and a survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp born in Vienna.
Source: Elisabeth Jäger - Wikipedia

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The project “Politics of Remembrance and the Transition of Public Spaces: A Political and Social Analysis of Vienna” (POREM) investigated the memorial landscape of Vienna dealing with political violence by the Austrofascist (1934-1938) and the National Socialist (1938-1945) regimes.

The project of University of Vienna offers an interactive map allowing the user to define temporal, spatial, social, and thematic factors for drawing specific maps of remembrance (and of forgetting too).

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How to use this web application

Explore seven decades of Vienna's Culture of Remembrance by navigating the timeline (1945-2018). In order to browse the memorials in the map below, simply select one of the predefined points in time (indicated in white and dark orange) or activate a particular period (grey and light orange). We have extracted these periods from the data and call them "layers of memorialization". You can also use the sliders to select any period of time. The area chart in the background of the timeline shows the number of memorials founded during a particular year.

The map shows the memorials with respect to the timeline selection by different categories (Remembering and Forgetting, Space, Place, Type, Social Identity, Personal Identity, Founders). A short text (next to the map) explains the meaning of the selected category. Please note that not each and every memorial is depicted in each category. Selecting the category Remembering and Forgetting you are shown all memorials which address or omit Austrofascism and/or National Socialism. With any of the other categories selected, the map will contain only memorials which address political violence and are relevant for the specific category. It is possible to reduce the number of places shown by filtering according to various criteria, which are listed in the tab on the left side of the map section.

A frequency chart below the description text indicates the selected number of places shown in the map. Note: The histogram on founders gives numbers of participations in founding activities for each category. Thus, the total amount of participations differs from the numbers of places given on the map.

Finally, the interactive map provides information about the selected memorials. Hovering over the map will indicate the number of memorials by municipal districts with respect to the actual category and filter settings. Detailed information about each and every place mapped can be gained by selecting individual points after zooming into the map.

Time periods and events

Austrofascism (1933-1938)

Following the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the proclamation of a democratic Republic on November 12, 1918, Austria was governed by a range of party coalitions. Between 1920 and 1933, the Christian Social Party held the chancellery. In Vienna, the Social Democrats governed with strong popular support and built 'Red Vienna', a worldwide model of municipal Socialism.

Against the background of a deep economic and political crisis in March 1933, the Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß exploited a deadlock situation to eliminate the parliament and inaugurate an authoritarian state. The government issued a ban on political assemblies and protests and dissolved the Republican Schutzbund, the paramilitary organization of the Social Democratic Party, as well as the Communist and the National Socialist parties.

In February 1934, Social Democrats in Upper Austria, Vienna, and Styria resisted against further repression by the federal government. After a short civil war resulting in around 360 deaths, the Social Democratic Party was banned. Some of its leaders were executed, others escaped into exile. In May 1934, Dollfuß, who had close ties with the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, proclaimed a new constitution based on four principles: Christian, German, Federal, Corporative. In July 1934, Dollfuß was killed during a National Socialist coup d'etat, which failed.

There is an ongoing debate about the naming (Austrofascism, Corporate State, Dollfuß-Schuschnigg regime) and the classification of the regime (e.g. semi-Fascism, imitation Fascism, authoritarian regime).

Please note that there are two signs of remembrance dating back to the period before 1945: The Memorial for fallen police forces 1934 at the Central Cemetery (Section 71F) from 1934, and the Relief Engelbert Dollfuß in St. Michael Church from 1937. These two items are not represented in the timeline and map above. Nonwithstanding, the POREM dataset includes both places.

The Anschluss (1938)

Opposed by outlawed Social Democrats as well as by outlawed National Socialists, the Austrofascist regime remained without strong popular support. After Hitler strengthened his ties to the Italian Fascist leader Mussolini, the Austrian regime drifted into political isolation.

Hitler pressured the Austrian regime to accept National Socialists such as Arthur Seyß-Inquart into the government. Among the populace, a union with Nazi Germany received ever more support. While Austrian National Socialists prepared the takeover from within, Chancellor Schuschnigg ruled out armed resistance against German troops and resigned on March 11, 1938. Seyß-Inquart formed a new government and, the following day, German troops entered Austria.

On March 13, the new government proclaimed a "Law on the Reunion of Austria with the German Reich". On March 15, Hitler held a speech at the Heldenplatz in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Almost 700,000 Austrians joined the NSDAP.

National Socialism (1938-1945)

Compared with state repression between 1933 and 1938, the National Socialist regime and its political police, the Gestapo, used state force far more intensely against those it considered political opponents and against those it classified as enemies of or incompatible with National Socialist society (the 'Volksgemeinschaft'). The Nazi judicial system executed around 600 political opponents including disobedient Wehrmacht soldiers in Vienna.

According to the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance (DÖW), around 3,700 Austrian opponents and resistance fighters fell victim to Nazi persecution. The majority died in concentration camps. With around 170,000 registered members, Vienna had the largest Jewish community in the German-speaking world and the third-largest in Europe. Beginning as early as the days of the Anschluss, Nazis and ordinary citizens perpetrated widespread antisemitic violence in the streets. Non-Jewish Viennese citizens benefited from the 'Aryanization' of apartments, shops, and factories. Very soon, with the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, SS officer Adolf Eichmann and his mostly Austrian staff established a model of systematic deprivation, expulsion, forced emigration, local displacement, and ghetto-like resettlement in Vienna, which in 1941 operated the mass deportations into concentration and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland and Belarus.

Of some 200,000 Viennese citizens classified by the Nazis as Jews, 48,000 were deported, more than 60,000 were murdered, and by the end of 1945, the Jewish community registered only 3,955 members. The systematic cleansing of the urban populace (or in Nazi terms the 'Volkskörper') hit the Sinti and Roma population similarly severely. Furthermore, in the field of social and health policy, the regime killed around 10,000 inhabitants.

As part of a policy of social discipline, the Gestapo and the criminal police systematically persecuted laborers for infringements of employment, homosexuals, so-called antisocial people, and people who had committed criminal offences. Members and sympathizers of the Communist party were among the most active in resisting National Socialist rule.

Liberation (1945)

Vienna was liberated by the 3 rd Ukrainian Front of the Red Army. The battle of Vienna started on April 5 and lasted until April 13. On April 27, the Socialist Party (SPÖ), the Christian Social People's Party (ÖVP), and the Communist Party (KPÖ) together proclaimed an independent and democratic Republic. The NSDAP was abolished and banned, its members were registered and excluded from voting. In July 1945, the Allies established four occupation zones in Austria and in Vienna. The first district was the only district under shared control.

In November 1945, the first democratic elections took place. On the federal level, the ÖVP received a share of 49.8 % of the vote, the SPÖ 44.6 %, and the KPÖ 5.4 %. The municipal elections in Vienna resulted in a dominant position of the SPÖ (57 %) ahead of the ÖVP (34 %) and KPÖ (7.9 %). In the second federal elections in 1949, most of the former National Socialists were allowed to vote. With 44 %, the ÖVP remained the strongest party ahead of the SPÖ (38.7 %) and the newly founded right-wing party VdU (11.7 %), the predecessor of the Freedom Party (FPÖ).

Antifascism and its Contestation (1945-1956)

The first layer of memorialization represents early nation-building efforts based on antifascism and anti-Nazism during the Allied occupation. Memorials were dedicated to resistance fighters and opponents to National Socialism and Austrofascism.

The dominant mnemonic actors were parties, businesses, and their staff, and municipal authorities who cultivated rather sectional than shared cultures of remembrance. Federal authorities displayed very few activities of memorialization.

Generally, Austria was portrayed as a victim of homemade Fascism and/or Nazi German oppression.

After 1949, antifascism faced increasing contestation. The 1950s were politically dominated by politics of societal und political integration of former National Socialists, SS, and Wehrmacht soldiers, which brought a relative decline of antifascist and anti-Nazi memorialization while veterans' associations established ever more memorials dedicated exclusively to fallen Wehrmacht soldiers.

State Treaty (1955)

On May 15, 1955, the Austrian government, the USA, the Soviet Union, France, and the United Kingdom signed the State Treaty, ending the occupation. Austria gained full sovereignty as an independent and democratic nation state.

The government declared it would not seek any form of union with Germany nor to allow any reactivation of National Socialist or Fascist organizations, and to guarantee the rights of national minorities. In the face of the Cold War, on October 26, 1955 the Austrian parliament voted for a law on the "everlasting neutrality" of Austria.

Memory Conflict and Pacification (1956-1976)

The second layer of memorialization was shaped by an intensified contestation of antifascism and anti-Nazism, yet very few memorials were added. In 1965, the Parliament declared October 26 to be the national holiday.

In the run-up to the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the Second Republic, violent clashes between antifascists on the one side and right-wing extremists and Wehrmacht or Nazi apologists on the other side resulted in the death of the resistance veteran Ernst Kirchweger. From the viewpoint of federal politics, the riots marked a negative highpoint of a polarized or fractured memory regime.

To counter further divisions, governments on federal and municipal levels aimed at pacifying memory conflicts through a culture of uncontested coexistence of opposing narratives of the past. Generally, official politics of remembrance were guided by a broad recognition of victimhood and acquittal of the war generation. All efforts were directed towards depoliticizing memory and appealing to forget past misdeeds in favor of the formation of a new national identity. As in the following layer, racial and social persecution was not a subject of public memorialization.

Segregation and Omission (1976-1988)

The third layer of memorialization developed from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s. Generally, the quantity of newly erected memorials was slightly higher than in layer 2, but omissions outweighed addressing political violence on relevant memorials throughout.

Activities of memorializing political violence remained rather segregated from overall society, taking place within a niche of survivors' associations and veterans of the resistance and their associations and institutions. At the end of this period, public conflicts and scandals were already being provoked by some projected memorials, such as the Monument against War and Fascism, which became a prelude to the Waldheim affair in 1986.

Waldheim Election (1986)

In 1986, presidential elections were to be held. The candidate of the Christian Social ÖVP was Kurt Waldheim, a former General Secretary of the United Nations, while Health Minister Kurt Steyrer ran for the SPÖ.

Rather unexpectedly, Waldheim's World War II service became the central topic of the election campaign. In his autobiography, he had passed over this issue. Investigations of journalists revealed that he had served as an intelligence officer with Wehrmacht units involved in crimes against the Jewish populations, partisans, and civilians in Greece and Yugoslavia.

Waldheim responded to his critics with comments such as "Ich habe im Krieg nichts anderes getan als hunderttausende Österreicher auch, nämlich meine Pflicht als Soldat erfüllt." (Like hundreds of thousands of other Austrians, I only fullfilled my duty as a soldier during the war.)

Against the background of an emerging international interest in the Holocaust and in questions such as compensation and restitution, Waldheim's attitude became symbolic of Austria's shortcomings in dealing with its National Socialist past after 1945. However, the sentiments of the populace were broadly in favor of Waldheim, and he won the election. On the international level, Waldheim's election was not looked upon favorably, and he remained isolated throughout his presidency.

Memorial Years (1988-1996)

1988, the fiftieth anniversary of the "Anschluss", witnessed the greatest number of signs of remembrance erected annually since 1949.

In the wake of the Waldheim affair, the invention of a national commemorative year was a first response of the federal and municipal governments to a deep crisis of politics of history induced by its sudden internationalization and European pressure on Austria and the Austrians to face their Nazi past.

For the first time, a number of memorial plaques were erected which addressed antisemitic violence such as the destruction of synagogues during the November Pogrom in 1938. The other half of memorials were dedicated to resistance fighters, therefore serving to reconstruct the antifascist victim narrative of the early postwar years. This ambivalence is also present in the famous Monument against War and Fascism by Alfred Hrdlicka, unveiled in 1988.

Neither the year 1988 nor the following political speeches of high-rank politicians on Austria's shared responsibility had a lasting impact on new signs of remembrance addressing Nazi political violence.

In 1995, April 27 became the central day of remembrance (the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of independence) while many European countries commemorated the end of World War II and the liberation from National Socialism on May 8. Although evincing an increase in memorialization, there was a recurrence of omitting Nazi violence, especially antisemitic violence.

Accession to the EU (1995)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, Austria aimed to join the European community. European efforts to bring the Nazi extermination policy to the center of politics of remembrance had to be taken into account if the country wanted to escape the international isolation of the Waldheim years.

When Chancellor Franz Vranitzky (SPÖ) in 1991 proclaimed the co-responsibility of Austrians for Nazi crimes, he explicitly presented the challenge for Austria to come to terms with its past as a contribution to a new political culture in Europe. In 1994, a majority of 66% of Austrians voted for the accession, which was effected on January 1, 1995.

Forgotten Victims (1996-2006)

This layer represents the beginning of the political, social, and mnemonic integration of so-called "forgotten victims" of Nazi political violence. It marks a first step of leaving exclusive national and communal politics of history behind and taking international developments more explicitly into account.

In 1995, the Austrian parliament recognized several previously "forgotten" groups of victims of National Socialism and set up the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. The National Fund increasingly developed into the external face representing a redefined Austrian policy of the past. It supports civil society memory projects in Austria and abroad as well.

At the same time, controversies on the Wehrmacht and the co-responsibility of Austrians for Nazi crimes, and questions about restitution of expropriated buildings and valuables continued to be important issues of public debate, triggering for example the formation of the Austrian Historical Commission. The long dispute on the memorial to the Austrian victims of the Shoah in the city center (unveiled in 2000) reflects the ambivalences of this layer rather well. Public institutions such as schools and universities began to commemorate persecuted pupils, students, teachers, artists, and academics. Omissions of political violence declined.

When the conservative People's Party ÖVP formed a coalition government with the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) led by Jörg Haider in February 2000, it met with strong European opposition and diplomatic sanctions in the wake of the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust that took place at the same time. Thus, efforts to balance (inter)national apprehensions of a backlash by concluding international restitution and compensation agreements, internal divisions inside the federal coalition and competing policies by the Social Democrats at the municipal level characterized politics of remembrance after 2000.

Stockholm Conference (2000)

From January 26 to 28, 2000, high-ranking politicians from more than forty countries gathered at the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust with civil society actors, survivors, and historians to discuss measures against genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia. Its closing declaration emphasized the importance of education, remembrance, and research about the Holocaust.

Politicians from the US, Israel, and Europe present at the Forum strongly criticized the leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party Jörg Haider and his participation in a governing coalition in Austria. Haider did not enter the government and resigned as head of his party, but despite international protests the People's Party formed a coalition government with the Freedom Party. In 2001, Austria became a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Memory Boom (2006-2018)

The last layer represents the so-called memory boom. The year 2006 was the first time that the number of newly erected signs of remembrance following a "commemorative year" did not noticeably decrease, and even increased sharply until 2008, thereafter remaining at a high level that had not occurred until then. Omissions of political violence rapidly decreased pro rata, disappearing almost entirely by 2014.

The founders of the majority of the new signs of remembrance were new memory actors in civil society with transnational ties to survivors and family members of persecuted persons living abroad. They erected a large number of small signs remembering persecution at authentic sites, for example where persecuted and murdered Jews had lived and worked.

The reshaping of the Heldenplatz with the transformation of the Austrian Heroes' Memorial and the erection of a memorial to Wehrmacht deserters was a central feature of this layer too.

The return of remembrance into the city came at a point when the categories of personal guilt and responsibility were not applicable anymore. The memorial projects are widely uncontested and mark the latest generational change with the disappearance of survivors and the departure of children of National Socialists, their followers, and Wehrmacht soldiers from professional life.

With the formation of the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition on the federal level (2007) and a SPÖ-Green Party coalition on the municipal scale (2009) the political framework for public politics of remembrance changed profoundly. Among SPÖ, ÖVP, and the Green Party, a widely consensual politics of remembrance was favored, fostering sentiments for a politically united Europe as a lesson learned from the past while the European integration project itself was in a deep economic and political crisis.

The federal government formed by the ÖVP and FPÖ in December 2017 did not intervene much in the established policy, trying instead to represent a continuity in memory politics. However, important civil society actors rejected joint activities with the FPÖ. This boycott changed the political structure of the memory boom to some extent and led to controversies surrounding memory politics in times of the reemergence of nationalism in Europe.

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Politics of Remembrance - Interactive Map

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Explore seven decades of Vienna's Culture of Remembrance by navigating the timeline (1945-2018). In order to browse the memorials in the map below, simply select one of the predefined points in time (indicated in white and dark orange) or activate a particular period (grey and light orange).

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The Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) offers an interesting multimedia map with a lists of Nazi persecution places in Vienna
DöW - Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance (doew.at)

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DÖW - Vienna Memento Wien{{ Page.title() }}

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Selma Steinmetz (1907 - 1979) was an Austrian educator and author who emigrated to France after the cancellation of democracy in Austria. After the German invasion in 1940, Selma Steinmetz became a resistance activist.
At the end of 1945 she was able to return to Vienna (where she had spent her student years) and was one of the first researchers to study the histories of victims of National Socialism. After 1963 she was an important contributor to the work of the Austrian Resistance Archive ("Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes").

Source: Selma Steinmetz - Wikipedia

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Rosa (Hoffman) Stallbaumer (1897-1942) was a member of the Austrian Resistance during World War II.
Her name is one of 124 names of women and men from Tyrol, Austria inscribed on the Liberation Monument at The Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz in Innsbruck in recognition of both her involvement in resisting National Socialism and of her death at Auschwitz, following her incarceration at that Nazi concentration camp as punishment for helping Jewish targets of Nazi persecution escape to Italy.

Source: Rosa Stallbaumer - Wikipedia

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»A person is first forgotten when his name is forgotten« (Talmud)

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»A person is first forgotten when his name is forgotten« (Talmud)

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The project  "Stumbling stones" , in german "Stolpersteine" began in 1992, when the artist Gunter Demnig first laid plaques in this format for victims of the Holocaust. He called the plaques ‘stumbling stones’ as a metaphor.  Nowadays there are over 70.000 stumbling stones all around the world. Each plaque is highly individual, featuring the person’s name, date of birth and fate.
In Austria the first stumbling stones were posed in 1997 in the  town of St. Georgen near Salzburg.
In many countries in Central Europe, including Austria single citizens or civil society organizations are preserving this memorials with cleaning and restoring actions.

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Preserving the memory of Holocaust victims - BBC News

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Dr. Anton Granig ( 1901 - 1945) was an Austrian priest and theologian and a resistance fighter against National Socialism. In 1942 he founded the resistance group "Antifascist Freedom Movement Austria" together with Karl Krumpl and Eduard Pumernig in Carinthia.

He and other members of the Group were sentenced to death and executed on April 5, 1945

Source: DÖW - Erinnern - Fotos und Dokumente - 1938 - 1945 - SCHLAGLICHTER - 15. April 1945 (doew.at)

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The "Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi Group" was an Austrian resistance group against National Socialism that aimed to collect and disseminate information about locations, employees and productions of Nazi arms factories to the Allies to avoid the bombing of civil areas.

Source: Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi – Wikipedia

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”The Men with the Pink Triangle”, published in 1972,  is based on the experience of Nazi concentration camp survivor Josef Kohout from Vienna, who was imprisoned for his homosexuality. The book was the first testimony of a gay survivor of a Nazi concentration camp and has originated from 15 interviews that Heger conducted with Kohout. Because of the book, the pink triangle became a symbol for the queer rights movement worldwide.

The photo below shows a book sharing installation to commemorate the homosexual victims of National Socialism, located in the 9th Bezirk of Vienna, in Heinz-Heger-Park.

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The Aspang Railway Station Memorial commemorates the Jewish Austrian men and women who were deported from Aspang Railway Station to be murdered. The station  was made the point of departure for deportation transports under the Nazi regime.
Of 47,035 Jewish men and women deported from Aspang Railway Station, only 1,073—according to calculations by historian Jonny Moser—survived the ghettos and extermination camps. For most of the more than 66,000 Austrian victims of the Shoah, the way to extermination began from this station in central Vienna.
The Aspang Railway Station Memorial consists of two 30 meter long converging concrete rails leading into a dark and hollow concrete block, symbol of death, nothingness, and oblivion.

Source: Aspang Railway Station Memorial / Public Art Vienna (koer.or.at)

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“Sometimes they beat you more, sometimes less. But they beat you every day.“

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“Sometimes they beat you more, sometimes less. But they beat you every day.“

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Michael Horvath - Austria

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“I want to remind one of the heaps of dead bodies. They were numerous.“

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“I want to remind one of the heaps of dead bodies. They were numerous.“

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Eva Lukash (born Kral) - Israel

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„My biography reflects the contradictions of the 20th century in quite a typical way.“

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„My biography reflects the contradictions of the 20th century in quite a typical way.“

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Karl Brozik (formerly Abeles) - Germany

Source: KZ-Gedenkstätte Mauthausen (mauthausen-memorial.org)

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Anna Bergman (born Kaudrová) - United Kingdom

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„It was incredibly difficult to walk hand in hand but we thought it was a stylish thing.”

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„It was incredibly difficult to walk hand in hand but we thought it was a stylish thing.”

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Gábor Bán - Hungary

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On her eighteenth birthday in 1938, she was witness to the violent excesses of the Nazi mob during the November Pogrom in Vienna: Ruth Maier, who had never before had a connection to Judaism, begins consideration of her identity in her diary. Thrown out of school; evicted from her home; without a future in Austria; she finds refuge in Norway in January 1939. From Oslo, she gets deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.
Ruth Maier kept a diary since 1933. In it, she described her feelings, her everyday life, documenting political events the persecution of Jews after the "Anschluss" of 1938.

Source : https://www.doew.at/

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"One of the things that father wrote again and again: 'The girls should go on with their trip to America!'"

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"One of the things that father wrote again and again: 'The girls should go on with their trip to America!'"

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Hedi Pope, survivor of the November pogrom in 1938 in Vienna

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Survivors Remember Kristallnacht: Hedi (Politzer) Pope

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One of the most remembered resistance fighters in Austria today, Franz Jägerstätter from Sankt Radegrund (Upper Austria) refused to collaborate with the Nazis because of his Christian belief. His relatives (except for his wife) and even the Cardinal of Vienna tried to convince him otherwise. He was arrested and transferred to Berlin-Tegel prison and excuted in 1943 for "unworthy of defense" and dishonor and for "undermining military strength."

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In this online exhibition, we remember National Socialist crimes, persecution and resistance in Austria with a special focus on non-violent forms of resistance. We encourage you to browse through the exhibition, to comment and to engage with the things that are exhibited.

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This is a sculpture by Flor Kent.
The boy is part of a series of memorials, all called ''Für das Kind' ('For the Child' / 'Pro Dítê').

This boy sitting on a suitcase at the Westbahnhof in Vienna, the girl with her family at the Main Station in Prague, and both children together at Liverpool Street Station in London,  are the several sculptures part of this serie.
In particular the statues commemorate the actions of Nicholas Winton, who came to the Czech Republic in 1938 to help organise the Kindertransport trains, as well as arranging the foster families and financial support required by the British government. In all, around 10,000 children were brought to safety in Britain

Source : https://www.holocaust.org.uk/fur-das-kind

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(6 September 1900 – 3 February 1975) was an Austrian human rights activist and campaigner against antisemitism.

Harand was born a Roman Catholic in Vienna and was an early organiser of protests against Nazi Germany's persecutions of Jews. She started the Harand Movement, an organisation Weltbewegung gegen Rassenhass und Menschennot (World Movement Against Racial Hatred and Human Suffering) in 1933 and actively campaigned throughout Europe before World War II.

Source : Irene Harand, Wikipedia.

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"And so we must know these good people who helped Jews during the Holocaust .We must learn from them, and in gratitude and hope, we must remember them."[1]
Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor.

In 1963, Yad Vashem,  The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, has started the Righteous Among the Nations project to pay tribute to the people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. A person who is recognized as Righteous for having taken risks to help Jews during the Holocaust is awarded a medal in their name, a certificate of honor, and the privilege of having the name added to those on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem . 109 Austrians have been Honored with this title.
In this Silent Exhibition we are mentioning only couple of Austrians who are listed in the The Righteous Among the Nations Database.

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The numbers of victims of Nazi persecution in Austria

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The numbers of victims of Nazi persecution in Austria

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In 2008, the following numbers were documented by Wolfgang Neugebauer:
"The number of Jewish Austrians killed ranges between 65.000 and 70.000, 62.000 of which have been specified by name within a large-scale project. 25.000 to 30.000 people were killed in euthanasia. The persecution of Austrian Roma resulted in 9.000 to 10.000 victims killed. The number of murdered resistance fighters lies between 4.000 and 5.000. The numbers for Austrian victims of persecution by the NS Regime is therefore around 103.000 in the lowest estimation, 115.000 in the highest one. The number of opponents to the regime who were convicted and imprisoned has approximately the same dimension. It is estimated around 100.000. This figure of about 210.000 must be compared to 700.000 members of the Nazi party and to 6.500.000 inhabitants of Austria in 1938."[1]

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In this image, as part of a ritual of public humiliation, Jewish men and women were forced to scrub the streets to remove political slogans that were critical of Germany’s annexation of Austria, an event also known as the Anschluss. In the background, members of the German SA and SS look on, joined by an apparently enthusiastic crowd of civilian spectators. In the days and weeks following the Anschluss, there was a rapid rise in anti-Jewish violence across Austria, particularly in Vienna, where 90 percent of Austria’s Jewish population lived.

Source : United States Holocaust History Museum

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Forced labor became a defining feature of life for Jews under the Nazi regime. While Nazi policies eventually introduced forced labor at camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, it was not part of policymakers inital plans. Instead, forced labor was originally intended to humiliate "racial enemies" and assert Nazi power.

In this image, as part of a ritual of public humiliation, Jewish men and women were forced to scrub the streets to remove political slogans that were critical of Germany's annexation of Austria, an event also known as the. ¹ In the background, members of the German SA and SS look on, joined by an apparently enthusiastic crowd of civilian spectators. In the days and weeks following the Anschluss, there was a rapid rise in anti-Jewish violence across Austria, particularly in Vienna, where 90 percent of Austria's Jewish population lived. ²

In forcing Jews to perform manual labor, the Nazis acted upon antisemitic ideas about Jews being unproductive, lazy, and overprivileged. Nazi officials encouraged children and crowds to watch and participate in these kinds of ritual humilations, ³ which could last hours or even days. In doing so, the party also sought to create public acceptance for the exclusion of Jews. ⁴ Distributing photographs of these events aided that effort. Images similar to this one were widely circulated at the time by the antisemitic Nazi publication Der Stürmer.

From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis, with the cooperation of many German agencies and businesses, passed numerous laws and regulations designed to impoverish Jews and remove them from economic life. ⁵ Jews were slowly stripped of any means to make a living and forced into unemployment, poverty-and many were forced into the kind of unskilled labor depicted in this photograph. In September 1938, the Austrian labor administration began requiring unemployed Jews to work in construction and road building projects. This approach, implemented first in Vienna, became the model for forced labor throughout the Third Reich. ⁶ Systematic use of Jewish forced labor began in earnest at the end of 1938 following Kristallnacht, the violent attack on Jews and Jewish owned businesses throughout Germany. ⁷ The forced labor program eventually expanded and included more groups, particularly eastern workers in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union.

The type of manual forced labor illustrated here was transformed into a large-scale program affecting millions of people within only three years. The marginalization of the Jewish community took place in public, in their own communities and streets, as this photograph demonstrates. Images like this one helped make the public willing to accept it.

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Photograph of Jews Cleaning Streets in Vienna

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Forced labor became a defining feature of life for Jews under the Nazi regime. While Nazi policies eventually introduced forced labor at camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, it was not part of policymakers inital plans. Instead, forced labor was originally intended to humiliate "racial enemies" and assert Nazi power.

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Diana Budisavljević was an Austrian humanitarian who led a major relief effort in Yugoslavia during World War II. From October 1941, on her initiative and involving many co-workers, she organized and provided assistance to mostly Serbian Orthodox women and children detained in the Ustashe camps in the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet state established in occupied Yugoslavia. The operation, known as "Action Diana Budisavljević", succeeded in saving around 10,000 children. Budisavljević described the course of the Action in a diary, starting with 23 October 1941 and the final entry on 7 February 1947. The diary was released in Croatian in 2003. After her story was better publicized in 2012, she received substantial posthumous recognition.

A film by Dana Budisavljević "The Diary of Diana B."

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“Waldheim Horse” first appeared at demonstrations in 1986, during the presidential campaign of former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, after his involvement in the Wehrmacht unit that was responsible for deportation of Jews Thessaloniki to the extermination camps came to light. This caused a major political scandal and finally led to a big debate among the general public about Austria’s Nazi past and the role of Austria in war crimes.  Waldheim Horse became a symbol of protest as a reference to the statement made by Federal Chancellor Fred Sinowatz “Kurt Waldheim was never in the SA, only his horse.”[1] Protesters insisted that they do not want to be a part of National "memory lapse". Wooden horse was made by Alfred Hrdlicka and can be found today in the Museum of Vienna. This work of performance art became symbol of antiracism, confrontation with Nazi past and enlightened civil society.[2]

A Documentary by Ruth Beckermann "The Waldheims Walz"