News – Veranstaltungen – Calls
20. März 2024 19:00 InterventionGedenkstätte Karajangasse. Geschichte und Perspektiven eines politischen LernortsDas heutige Gymnasium am Augarten erstreckt sich über eine Fläche, die bis zur Zusammenlegung drei Grundstücke umfasste: Neben dem Brigitta-Realgymnasium und einem Wohngebäude befand sich dort auch eine Volksschule für Mädchen. Nach dem „Anschluß“ 1938 wurden jüdische Lehrer:innen und...Weiterlesen... |
24. April 2024 19:00 BuchpräsentationIngeborg Bachmann, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Hilde Domin, Nelly Sachs: Über Grenzen sprechend. Briefe. Piper/Suhrkamp, München, Berlin, Zürich 2023Ingeborg Bachmann stand mit zentralen Protagonistinnen der deutschsprachigen Literatur im Austausch, nun werden ihre Briefwechsel mit Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Hilde Domin und Nelly Sachs erstmals zugänglich gemacht. Die Briefe geben Einblick in die Lebensbedingungen, das literarische S...Weiterlesen... |
07. Mai 2024 00:00 - 04. Juni 2024 00:00 WorkshopDealing with Antisemitism in the Past and Present. Scientific Organisations and the State of Research in AustriaThis series of talks, presented by antisemitism experts from different organisations that research antisemitism using a variety of academic approaches, aims to provide a snapshot of historical evolutions, current events, prevalent perceptions and declared (and undeclared) attitudes. I...Weiterlesen... |
The Lodz Ghetto and the Kriminalpolizei: Jews, Neighbors, and Perpetrators in the Holocaust
VWI Senior Fellow Winson Chu will hold the Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture in Eastern European Jewish Studies at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York on Thursday, 4 April 2024.
The German criminal police (Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo) maintained a permanent station in the Lodz ghetto, which over the four years of its existence imprisoned some 200,000 Jews. Responsible for stopping smuggling networks and for gathering information about hidden possessions inside and outside the ghetto, the Kripo relied heavily on local ethnic Germans, the so-called Volksdeutsche. These policemen exploited their prewar social networks in their investigations and carried out violent acts against Jews familiar to them. They deployed their Polish and Yiddish language skills in interrogations of suspects, and they used their knowledge of Jewish religious practices and local customs to spy on the Jews and later to evaluate their confiscated property.
In this talk, Winson Chu focuses on how police records in Poland and survivor sources at YIVO enable a better understanding of such prewar connections with wartime perpetrators. By providing additional detail and context to existing accounts of ghetto experiences, this approach re-embeds Jews into interethnic relations in prewar Lodz and Nazi-occupied Poland and questions the common perception of the Lodz ghetto as “hermetically sealed.”
EHRI Workshop and Microarchives in Austria
The full-day workshop "EHRI and Microarchives in Austria" took place at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) on 4 March 2024. The Institute presented EHRI's plans to improve support for microarchives and invited Austrian microarchive owners and experts to discuss the opportunities and challenges of collaboration. The microarchive owners shared their wishes and requirements with the VWI-EHRI team, which may lead to further cooperation.
EHRI-Workshop und Mikroarchive in Österreich
Unter dem Titel “EHRI und Mikroarchive in Österreich“ fand am 4. März 2024 ein ganztägiger Workshop am Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien (VWI) statt. Das Institut präsentierte hier das Vorhaben von #EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure), die Unterstützung für Mikroarchive zu verbessern und lud hierfür österreichische Mikroarchivinhaber:innen sowie Expert:innen ein, um Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen einer Zusammenarbeit zu diskutieren. Die Mikroarchivinhaber:innen haben mit dem VWI-EHRI-Team ihre Wünsche und Anforderungen geteilt, mit denen eine weitere Zusammenarbeit zustande kommen kann.
Workshop: Europe and the USSR. Literature in the Face of the Persecution and Extermination of the Jews
A workshop organised by VWI Senior fellow Atinati Mamatsashvili, hosted by the VWI on 22 March 2024
The workshop’s purpose is to examine the literary, artistic, musical and cinematographic responses to the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1930s, which led to the systematic persecution and extermination of Europe’s Jews. It will focus on the period before as well as after the war. This will allow to consider, on the one hand, the capacity of literature (and other media) to project an aftermath as a consequence of ongoing events, and on the other hand the aftermath as it was felt in the years following the Shoah.
What was the response or capability of writers who were subjected to censorship during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist regimes? How did authors depict the re-emergence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and European countries in the decades before and after the Second World War in their literary (artistic) works? This workshop aims to raise initial questions on a vast subject that is still very under-explored in certain areas and from certain perspectives, such as minor literature and forgotten writers.
Organisers
Anke Bosse (Universität Klagenfurt/Musil-Institut/Kärntner Literaturarchiv)
Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University / Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien)
Stellungnahme des Wiener Wiesenthal Instituts für Holocaust-Studien (VWI) zum aktuell weltweit ansteigenden Antisemitismus
Das VWI verurteilt den starken Anstieg antisemitischer Vorfälle von verbaler und physischer Gewalt sowie der weltweiten Bedrohung von Jüdinnen und Juden nach den terroristischen Angriffen der Hamas auf israelische Wohngebiete am 7. Oktober 2023. In der Nacht auf den 1. November 2023 wurde die Zeremonienhalle im jüdischen Teil des Wiener Zentralfriedhofs in Brand gesteckt.
New EHRI Podcast: A Sunflower for Simon Wiesenthal
The first episode of the second season of the EHRI Podcast "For the Living and the Dead. Traces of the Holocaust“ has just launched. This episode is called "A Sunflower for Simon". Katharina Freise talks to VWI's Marianne Windsperger and Kinga Frojimovics about Simon Wiesenthal’s sunflowers, real ones, or artificial and made from paper or any other material. In 1969, Holocaust survivor and author Simon Wiesenthal wrote The Sunflower. On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. In this book, he recounted his experience with a mortally wounded Nazi soldier during World War II, and then asked prominent figures from politics, science and theology the question about what they would do under the circumstance.
The “Sunflower” in the title referred to Wiesenthal's observation of a German military cemetery, where he saw a sunflower on each grave, while he was imprisoned in the Janowska concentration camp near Lviv and feared for his own body to end up in an unmarked mass grave.
The book touched many people, some of whom then expressed their emotions by sending sunflowers, real or crafted, to Wiesenthal’s office.
Listen to the episode on Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or on the webpage: https://www.ehri-project.eu/podcast-episode-sunflower-simon.
Was geschah in der Ankerbrotfabrik während der NS-Zeit? Ein Inselmilieu-Podcast
Inselmileu Reportage hat einen zweiteiligen Podcast über die Ankerbrotfabrik während der NS-Zeit produziert. Teil eins der Doppelfolge befasst sich mit der Arisierung und dem späteren Umgang des Unternehmens mit der NS-Geschichte bzw. deren Ausblendung. Die zweite Folge – für die der wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter des VWI Philipp Rohrbach sowie Direktor Jochen Böhler interviewt wurden – widmet sich den Verstrickungen der Vorfahren vieler Österreicher:innen in die Verbrechen der NS-Zeit sowie ungarisch-jüdischer Zwangsarbeit in der Ankerbrotfabrik, die bis heute wenig thematisiert wurde. Die Inhalte des Gesprächs basieren unter anderem auf den Recherchen folgender VWI-Projekte zu ungarisch-jüdischer Zwangsarbeit 1944/45:
Ungarisch-jüdische Zwangsarbeit in Wien 1944/45
Projektbeschreibung
Kinga Frojimovics and Éva Kovács: Jews in a ‘Judenrein’ City: Hungarian Jewish Slave Laborers in Vienna (1944–1945)
Anzuhören auf: Spotify, Apple Podcasts oder auf der offiziellen Website.
Heidemarie Uhl (1956–2023)
Mit großem Bedauern vernahmen wir die Nachricht des Ablebens der renommierten Historikerin Heidemarie Uhl (1956–2023). Die langjährige Mitarbeiterin der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften bzw. des Instituts für Kulturwissenschaften und Theatergeschichte (IKT) war eine der wichtigsten und prägendsten Stimmen der österreichischen Gedächtniskultur in den Bereichen Nationalsozialismus, Antisemitismus und Holocaust. Das Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien (VWI) verdankt ihr zahlreiche konstruktive und bereichernde Beiträge. Ihre Arbeit und ihr Engagement bleiben uns genauso in Erinnerung wie ihre grundehrliche, unterstützende und stets kollegiale Art. Ein unermesslicher Verlust für die Forschungslandschaft.
It was with great sadness that we heard the news of the passing of the renowned historian Heidemarie Uhl (1956-2023). A long-time staff member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Culture Studies and Theatre History (IKT), she was one of the most important and influential voices in the Austrian culture of memory in the areas of National Socialism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) owes her numerous constructive and enriching contributions. We will always remember her work and commitment as well as her honest, supportive and always collegial manner. An immeasurable loss for the research landscape.
Now online: Wiesenthal in Linz - A Virtual Exhibition
We are happy to announce the publication of our newest project: Wiesenthal in Linz - A Virtual Exhibition. The online exhibition presents the so-called “Linz documents” - a set of documents that form the basis of the Jewish Documentation Centre's (JDC) archival collection. Like many other Holocaust-related Jewish collections after WWII, the documents are highly dispersed: While the majority of the DP camp files are held by the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem, the six folders Simon Wiesenthal brought to Vienna himself are located in the archives of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). Other relevant documents can be found in the archives of the Jewish communities in Linz and Vienna, in the DP camp collection of the YIVO Institute in New York, and in the archives of “The Joint”.
Wiesenthal in Linz - A Virtual Exhibition is the result of a three-year project of the VWI funded by the Claims Conference. The goal was to start reconnecting, at least virtually, this closely related collection of documents from Simon Wiesenthal’s time in Linz and to provide a single place to find information on the history and characteristics of the material for researchers.
Gender Equality and Diversity Statement 2023-2025 published
Starting in 2023, the VWI committed to establish a roadmap to promote and implement measures to strengthen gender equality and diversity in its organisational structure, academic and programmatic work as well as in its representation and external communication. This process will build on International, European and national legislation. The full text of the Gender and Equality Statement 2023-2025 can be found here.