European Holocaust Research Infrastructure becomes 30th EU-Recognised Research Consortium: A major milestone in Holocaust studies

On 26 January 2025 – on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau – EHRI was launched as an ERIC. This European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) will form a solid foundation for future Holocaust research and documentation in Europe and beyond. The inauguration ceremony took place in the POLIN Museum in Warsaw and was attended by representatives of the 10 founding members, long-term EHRI project members, members of the national nodes and the wider EHRI-community. In their speeches the official representatives highlighted the importance of Holocaust research and documentation in the fight against Holocaust distortion, in the education of empathic young adults, in combatting antisemitism and other forms of racism and in protecting the facts. With the rise of right-wing nationalism, populism and illiberal politics in many European countries, the protection of academic freedom will be at the core of what EHRI-ERIC stands for. Austria is one of the founding members – the VWI as coordinating institution of EHRI-AT is looking forward to work with its Austrian partners in order to secure transnational research and documentation.

Photo: Maciek Jazwiecki

Jewish Claims Conference "Cross Country Holocaust Survey" out now!

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the commemoration of the Holocaust, the Claims Conference has published the results of its “Cross Country Holocaust Survey”. Adults from eight countries - seven European countries (including Austria) and the USA - were asked about their knowledge of and attitudes towards the Holocaust. The results are distressing: Over half of the participants believe that the Holocaust could happen again, a shockingly high percentage blatantly underestimate the number of victims and cannot name any of the about 40,000 camps and ghettos in which Jews were murdered. However, this ignorance goes hand in hand with an increased awareness of the need to educate people about the Holocaust: The overwhelming majority of respondents agree on this. The VWI was involved in the preparation of the survey.

https://www.claimscon.org/study/

Photo: "Selection on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1944", © Wiki Commons

Martin Pollack (1944–2025)

The VWI team mourns the death of the Austrian writer and historian Martin Pollack, who died on January 17, 2025. Tireless in his fight for enlightenment and against forgetting, he dealt with the crimes and crime scenes of National Socialism and Stalinism throughout his whole life. His probably most famous book, “Der Tote im Bunker” [The Dead Man in the Bunker] (2004) [English: 2006], dealt with his father Gerhard Bast, who had headed the Linz Gestapo and commanded several Einsatzkommandos that carried out mass murders of Jews in the occupied East. Pollack’s unsparing reckoning with Austria's Nazi past, right down to the abysses of his own family, made him a kindred spirit to Wiesenthal, for whom he felt great admiration. He has repeatedly enriched the events of the VWI with his wit and received - among many honors and awards - the prestigious Theodor Kramer Prize for Writing in Resistance and Exile in 2019. In Martin Pollack, the Austrian public has lost a sovereign thinker, an unwavering explorer of the past and a free man - at a time when such people are needed more urgently than ever.

Martin Pollack bei der Buchpräsentation zu Susanne Heim/Klaus-Peter Friedrich "Polen: Generalgouvernement. August 1941–1945" 2014
Martin Pollack bei der Buchpräsentation zu Zoltán Halasi: "Der Weg zum leeren Himmel" 2015
Laudatio auf Martin Pollack zum Theodor Kramer Preis für Schreiben im Widerstand und im Exil von Béla Rásky, ehemaliger Geschäftsführer des VWI (S.20-22)

Photo: © VWI

Teaching about the Roma Genocide. Prospects and Challenges: Conference report now online

“It is key to bring the Roma Agency and Roma perspectives into education about the Genocide of the Roma. By centering Roma voices, this has the potential to empower Roma, support their organisations, and promote a diverse and constructive learning environment for both teachers and students”, say participants at the international workshop “Teaching about the Roma Genocide. Prospects and Challenges” hosted by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in cooperation with the OeAD/ERINNERN:AT on 26-27 September 2024. The workshop was realised at the suggestion and with the financial support of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.
Read the conference report here.

Closing Times

Dear visitors,

Please note the following closing times:

Archive: 16 December 2024 to 6 January 2025
Library: 23 December 2024 to 6 January 2025
Museum: 16 December 2024 to 6 January 2025

Thank you for your understanding.

Research Trip to Poland

As part of the editing project of Adolf Landl's memoirs on his experiences as a policeman and resistance fighter in the Kielce area during the Second World War, Philipp Rohrbach and Jochen Böhler travelled to Poland from 7 to 11 October 2025. They were accompanied by one of Landl's nephews and the son of Josef Rothwein, Landl's assistant at the Kielce gendarmerie station at the time. The journey first took them to Krakow, where on 8 October a research symposium on the project in cooperation with the Krakow City Museum, the Institute of National Remembrance Krakow, and the historical association ‘Vestigia Memoriae’ met with great public interest. On 9 October, the group visited the National Museum in Kielce, where the head of the history department gave them an insight into Landl's memoirs. Prior to this, they had been invited to the Marshal's Office of the Holy Cross Voivodeship for a lively exchange of ideas. The next day's programme included a visit to the Institute of National Remembrance Kielce, which has further files on the project. In Landl's former base in Łopuszno, the visitors from Austria met with locals, including relatives of the victims of the 1943 massacre in nearby Skałka Polska, at the mayor's office and then paid their respects at the memorial site. Polish television (TVP Krakow/TVP Kielce) and radio (Radio eM Kielce) reported extensively on the trip.

Yehuda Bauer (1926–2024) – ein großer Historiker hat uns verlassen

Yehuda Bauer wurde am 6. April 1926 als Martin Bauer in Prag geboren. Nach langen Vorbereitungen gelang es der Familie im März 1939 noch rechtzeitig aus dem nationalsozialistischen Machtbereich zu flüchten. Über Polen, Rumänien und die Türkei gelangten sie in das damalige britische Mandatsgebiet von Palästina, heute Israel. Dort absolvierte Yehuda Bauer die Schule, mit Hilfe eines Stipendiums konnte er in Cardiff, Wales, sein Geschichtsstudium absolvieren, das er an der Hebräischen Universität in Jerusalem abschloss, wo er später dann selbst lehrte. Seine Lehrtätigkeit führte ihn in der Folge auch an verschiedene Universitäten der USA.

Nationale Geschichtsverengung war Bauer stets fremd. Ausgehend von seinen umfassenden Sprachkenntnissen waren ihm Quellen und Fachliteratur der wesentlichen am Holocaust beteiligten Länder zugänglich. Damit erarbeitete er sich einen globalen Überblick, der ihm ein hohes Maß an Kontextualisierung sowie beeindruckenden Überblick über das Gesamtgeschehen ermöglichte. Schuldzuweisungen im Kontext der Holocaustinvolvierung einzelner Mitgliedsländer waren ihm fremd, Erkenntnis von Verantwortung und Mitverantwortung hingegen wichtig. Von 2006 bis 2009 war Yehuda Bauer Mitglied des Gründungsbeirats des Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). Als Mitbegründer und zuletzt Ehrenvorsitzender der International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) mit ihren heute bereits 35 Mitgliedsländern in Europa, Nord- und Südamerika, Asien und Australien betonte er stets, dass alle Länder sich ihrer Verstrickung in den Holocaust stellen und aus dieser Erkenntnis heraus zusammenarbeiten sollten, um die Geschichte ohne Rücksicht auf nationale Empfindlichkeiten aufzuarbeiten und besorgniserregende Tendenzen der Gegenwart zu bekämpfen. Bauer sah den Holocaust als präzedenzlos, aber warnte stets davor, dass er sich auch wiederholen könnte, also kein singuläres abgeschlossenes Verbrechen sei. Ein großes Anliegen war ihm die korrekte Geschichtsdarstellung, bis zuletzt setzte er auch im Rahmen der IHRA alles daran, wachsende, in vielen Ländern auch aus nationalistischen Motiven zu beobachtende Verharmlosungen und Verfälschungen in der Darstellung des Holocaust zu bekämpfen unter dem Grundsatz „protect the facts“.

Read more: Nachruf Yehuda Bauer

Museum Simon Wiesenthal awarded with the Austrian Museum Seal of Quality

The Future of Memory - Museum Simon Wiesenthal was honoured with the Austrian Museum Seal of Quality on Wednesday, 9 October 2024. The award emphasises particularly high-quality and excellent museum work and highlights the highest quality standards in the Austrian museum community to date. It is also a commitment to the responsibility of preserving cultural heritage, recognising the ICOM Ethical Guidelines for Museums and offering visitors an outstanding museum experience. We are delighted to have been recognised and are devoting ourselves to all the next steps to expand the experience of ‘The Future of Memory - Museum Simon Wiesenthal’ and make it even more accessible.

Angelika Brechelmacher, Deputy Director of the VWI, and Sandro Fasching, responsible for the Museum Simon Wiesenthal, accepted the seal of approval at the ceremony at Wien Museum organised by ICOM Austria and the Museumsbund Österreich. Eleven new museums throughout Austria were recognised and the seal of approval was renewed for 109 institutions.

Photo (c) Kollektiv Fischka

Connected Histories. Memories and Narratives of the Holocaust in Digital Space

Edited by: Eva Pfanzelter, Dirk Rupnow, Kovács Éva and Marianne Windsperger
De Gruyter Brill Oldenbourg

New Open Access Publication by EHRI-AT Partners:
The edited volume Connected Histories. Memories and Narratives in Digital Space has been published in the De Gruyter Series "Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics". Contributions are based on the first EHRI-AT Conference.

The World Wide Web (WWW) and digitisation have become important sites and tools for the history of the Holocaust and its commemoration. Today, some memory institutions use the Internet at a high professional level as a venue for self-presentation and as a forum for the discussion of Holocaust-related topics for potentially international, transcultural and interdisciplinary user groups. At the same time, it is not always the established institutions that utilise the technical possibilities and potential of the Internet to the maximum. Creative and sometimes controversial new forms of storytelling of the Holocaust or more traditional ways of remembering the genocide presented in a new way with digital media often come from people or groups who are not in the realm of influence of the large memorial sites, museums and archives. Such "private" stagings have experienced a particular upswing since the boom of social media. This democratisation of Holocaust memory and history is crucial though it is as yet undecided how much it will ultimately reinforce old structures and cultural, regional or other inequalities or reinvent them.

The “Digital space” as an arbitrary and limitless archive for the mediation of the Holocaust spanning from Russia to Brazil is at the centre of the essays collected in this volume. This space is also considered as a forum for negotiation, a meeting place and a battleground for generations and stories and as such offers the opportunity to reconsider the transgenerational transmission of trauma, family histories and communication. Here it becomes evident: there are new societal intentions and decision-making structures that exceed the capabilities of traditional mass media and thrive on the participation of a broad public.

Authors:
Eva Pfanzelter, Éva Kovács, Dirk Rupnow, Marianne Windsperger, Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman, Roberto Ulloa, Marya Sydorova, Juhi Kulshrestha, Mia Berg, Stefania Manca, Silvia Guetta, Anna Carolina Viana, Bárbara Deoti, Maria Visconti, Anja Ballis, Josefine Honke, Edith Blaschitz, Heidemarie Uhl, Georg Vogt, Rosa Andraschek, Martin Krenn, Wolfgang Gasser, Iris Groschek, Nicole Steng, Beth S. Dotan, Archie Wolfman & Anna Menyhért

Funded by: University of Innsbruck , Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies und University of Luxembourg

Deported. Comparative Perspectives on Paths to Annihilation for Jewish Populations under Nazi German Control

Michaela Raggam-Blesch / Peter Black / Marianne Windsperger (eds.)

Transit facilities and railway stations used for deportation have been rediscovered as central sites of the Shoah in recent years. Public memorials and monuments recall the deportation of the Jewish population to ghettos, annihilation camps, and sites of mass murder. What has long remained a desideratum is a comprehensive, comparative, and analytical overview of deportations from territories under control or influence of Nazi Germany. This volume aims to determine differences and commonalities in the organisation and implementation of deportations in Nazi-dominated Europe. It analyses the relationship between central switching points of the ‘Final Solution’ and local civilian, military and SS-Police authorities and investigates how Jewish organisations were forced to collaborate in the process of their own destruction. The present research examines the limited agency of Jewish Councils, the deportation of provisionally protected groups such as members of ‘mixed families’, the importance of citizenship, and the despotism of individual perpetrators.

Contributions are based on the 2019 workshop “Deportiert. Vergleichende Perspektiven auf die Organisation des Wegs in die Vernichtung”, co-organised by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

With contributions from:
Cornelia Shati-Geissler, Akim Jah, Dieter Hecht, Laurien Vastenhout, Hendrik Althoff, Niklas Perzi, Lovro Kralj, John R. Barruzza, Valeria Galimi, Andreas K. Bouroutis, Michaela Raggam-Blesch, Maria von der Heydt, Naida-Michal Brandl, Borbála Klacsmann

Published in: Beiträge zur Holocaustforschung des Wiener Wiesenthal Instituts für Holocaust-Studien (VWI) – soon as open access.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Heidemarie Uhl, who made a significant contribution to the concept of the workshop.