Summer opening hours: Museum I Archive I Library

Please note the changed opening hours of the VWI for the summer months.

The Future of Memory – Museum Simon Wiesenthal:
July and August
Monday to Friday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Archive:
Closed from 18 July to 15 August 2022

Otherwise, the regular opening hours apply:

Monday: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Tuesday: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Wednesday: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

To visit or use the archive a registration is required.
Phone: +43-1-890-15-14-400
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

VWI Library
Closed from 28 July to 25 August 2022
Otherwise, regular opening hours apply:

Tuesday: 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Read more: Sommeröffnungszeiten Museum I Archiv I Bibliothek

Statement | EHRI Condemns Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) strongly condemns the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and is gravely concerned about its impact on civilians, not to mention other living beings and the land. As a research infrastructure devoted to the study of genocide and war, we are shocked that an unprovoked and inexcusable attack on a sovereign country is possible in Europe in the 21st century: https://www.ehri-project.eu/statement-ehri-condemns-russia-invasion-ukraine

Statement by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies on Political Harassment Against 'Memorial', Moscow

Vienna, November 15, 2021

On November 11, 2021, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation gave notice to the International Memorial Society that the General Prosecutor’s Office filed to liquidate the organization (Memorial - Prosecutor's Office Launches Legal Action to Shut Down Memorial).

This action was preceded by years of harassment by the Russian authorities -- now under the guise of Memorial’s shortcomings to conform to the notorious 2012 “foreign agent” law (alleging that organizations that receive foreign donations, support foreign interests). Its researchers have also been arrested on other spurious charges.

Memorial began in 1987 as an 11-person signature campaign for a monument to victims of Soviet terror under the honorary chairmanship of Andrei Sakharov and has since grown into the most authoritative research center on Stalinism. It gathered thousands of eyewitness testimonies from Gulag victims and produced outstanding scholarly reference works on the Stalinist state apparatus. More than a generation of researchers has benefitted from these materials, sometimes literally unearthed by Memorial.

Memorial has been in a tug of war with the state for years on how the story of the Stalinist past should be told. This move against the organization manifests an entrenched, systemic hostility to freedom of expression, and the erosion of intellectual and academic freedom in today’s Russia. More concerning is that this measure evidences a reinstitution of the type of social control and surveillance that characterized the Soviet period – reviled practices that were last witnessed in the 1980s.

The court hearing of this case is scheduled for November 25, 2021. We hope that its outcome will support the fact that the future of the past should not be in the hands of the state. The banning of Memorial is not an internal problem of Russia but would also cause irreparable damage to academic freedom and international relations.

International Academic Advisory Board
Board of Directors
VWI-Team