Innocent Culprits – Silent Communities. On the Europeanisation of the Memory of the Shoah in Austria

Abstract

The Shoah destroyed the substance of Austrian Jewishness. The emigration of the survivors after 1945 and the indignation of the Austrian society resulted in the dislocation of the memory of the Shoah itself. The Shoah provoked a massive social amnesia during the first two to three decades after World War II in Europe. The long silence was broken by the American television series Shoah in 1979 and by the Waldheim affair in 1986. Since the second half of the 1990s, a large‐scale restitution process and a new government program of commemoration have begun. Seemingly, Austria has successfully joined the mainstream of the European culture of memory. However, Austrian Jews as victims or survivors gradually came to be missing or played a minor role in the daily practice of the local and national politics of memory. One has the impression that the ‘local Jews’ have been overshadowed by the Europeanisation of the Shoah. The paper presents an Austrian case as a paradoxical example of ‘creative forgetting’ or ‘forgetting by remembering’.

Notes

1. See William Johnston, The Austrian Mind (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972); Emmerich Tálos, Ernst Hanisch, Wolfgang Neugebauer und Reinhard Sieder (eds), NS‐Herrschaft in Österreich (Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 2000).

2. Victor Theodor Slama, Druck: Globus, Wien 1946, 37.4 × 27.4 in./95.0 × 69.5 cm, ÖNB‐FLU, 16310699, available at www.onb.ac.at/sammlungen/plakate/siteseeing/wieder_frei/exhibition_1946/194603_text.htm (last accessed 15 May 2007).

3. [Heinrich] Sussmann, WStLB Poster collection, Signature P 11122, available at www.stadtbibliothek.wien.at/ausstellungen/1999/wa‐237/naziverbrechen/P11122‐de.htm (last accessed 15 May 2007).

4. See Robert Knight, “Ich bin dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen.” Die Wortprotokolle der österreichischen Bundesregierung von 1945 bis 1952 über die Entschädigung der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum 1988).

5. In: Der neue Weg, No. 29/30, 15. August 1946. Cit. Brigitte Bailer, “Der ‘antifaschistische Geist’ der Nachkriegszeit” (Paris 1999), available at www.doew.at/thema/antifageist/antifageist.html (last accessed 15 May 2007).

6. See Gerhard Benetka, “Entnazifizierung und verhinderte Rückkehr. Zur personellen Situation der akademischen Psychologie in Österreich nach 1945”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 9/2 (1998), pp.188–217.

7. However, the concept of the ‘first victims’ was developed by The Moscow Declaration on Austria (30 October 1943): ‘The Government of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free country to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination’. See Robert H. Keyserlingk, Austria in World War II (Kingston–Montreal: McGill–Queen's University Press, 1988), p.207.

8. See Walter Manoschek: “Verschmähte Erbschaft. Österreichs Umgang mit dem Nationalsozialismus 1945–1955”, in Reinhard Sieder, Heinz Steinert and Emerich Tálos (eds), Österreich 1945–1955. Gesellschaft, Politik, Kultur (Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1995), p.100.

9. See e.g. the Austrian Monuments of War from the 1950s. In Heidemarie Uhl, “Das ‘erste Opfer’. Der österreichische Opfermythos und seine Transformation in der Zweiten Republik”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 1 (2001), pp.19–34.

10. To the mechanisms of the taboo making see: Gerhard Baumgartner, “Erinnerte und vergangene Zeit”, in Emil Brix, Ernst Bruckmüller and Hannes Stekl (eds), Memoria Austriae – Menschen, Mythen, Zeiten (Wien: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004), pp.530–44.

11. Holocaust – The Story of the Family Weiss (R: Marvin Chomsky). NBC, New York.

12. See Gerhard Botz and Gerald Sprengnagel, Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte. Verdrängte Vergangenheit, Österreich‐Identität, Waldheim und die Historiker (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1994).

13. The United States answered for these with adding of Waldheim's name to the watch list of the Ministry of Justice and, from 1987, Waldheim was not allowed to enter the United States.

14. However, the new thesis was not fully accepted by the Austrian society. See Ruth Wodak, “Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter!”: diskurshistorische Studien zum Nachkriegsantisemitismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990).

15. See www.mauthausen‐memorial.at (last accessed 15 May 2007).

16. See Udo Fellner, “Bittere Heimatgeschichte. Das Schicksal der jüdischen Zwangsarbeiter in Krottendorf und Kalch”, in Gerhard Baumgartner, Eva Müllner and Rainer Münz (eds), Identität und Lebenswelt. Ethnische, religiöse und kulturelle Vielfalt in Österreich (Eisenstadt: Prugg, 1989), pp.128–32.

17. See Eva Holpfer, Der Umgang der burgenländischen Nachkriegsgesellschaft mit NS‐Verbrechen bis 1955 – Am Beispiel der wegen der Massaker von Deutsch‐Schützen und Rechnitz geführten Volksgerichtsprozesse (Wien: Diplomarbeit, 1998); a shorter version was published in Italian language: “Il massacro di Rechnitz”, Storia e Documenti, 6 (2001), pp.205–21. See also: www.nachkriegsjustiz.at/ns_verbrechen/juden/rechnitz_eh.php (last accessed 15 May 2007).

18. See http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2344618 (last accessed 15 May 2007).

19. USHMM, #33984, available at: www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/guidelines/historical.php (last accessed 15 May 2007).

20. See Gert Tschögl, “Geschichte der Juden in Oberwart”, in Baumgartner, Müllner and Münz (eds) (note 16), pp. 116–27.

21. A survivor of Burgenland formulated this difference in the following: ‘Nobody emigrates, if it isn't necessary. I wouldn't ever leave Austria from my free will. I didn't escape from Burgenland to Vienna or to America in the Dollfuß‐Schuschnigg area (1934) although I could. However, there were really bad times, too’. In Eva Deinhofer and Traude Horvath (eds), Grenzfall. Burgenland 1921–1991 (Veliki Boristof, 1991), p.63.

22. See www.refugius.at; www.memorial‐museums.net/ (last accessed 15 May 2007).

23. See www.mkoe.at (last accessed 15 May 2007).

24. In the movie the basic truth forms the background of a ‘Cat and Mouse’ game between Shoah survivor Isador Sandorffy, who wants to find the location of the mass grave in order to give these Jews a proper burial, and the people of Rechnitz who give wrong clues and object to the search. See “Totschweigen”/Wall of Silence, Directed by Margarete Heinrich and Eduard Erne. A co‐oproduction among Austria, Germany and Netherlands, 1994; “März. Der 24. Ein fiktiver Versuch über einen real geschehenen Massenmord”/24th of March. A Fictional Attempt at a Real Happened Mass Murder”, Directed by Peter Wagner (Oberwart, 1995). See Peter Wagner, Tetralogie der Nacktheit/Tetralogy of the Nakedness (Oberwart: edition lex liszt 12, 1995).

25. This kind of anthropologisation led to the mushrooming of institutes of genocide research all over the world. The notorious reaction to the paradox that the matter concerns very specific victims and very general perpetrators is strongly criticized by Dan Diner in response to an essay by Jaspers on the question of guilt. See Dan Diner, “On Guilt‐Discourse and Other Narratives: Epistemological Observations Regarding the Holocaust”, History & Memory, 9/1–2 (1997).

26. For example, an object (on a 4 × 1 m ground plate, two 2 m high yellow triangles) designed by an Austrian artist, was erected in Budapest and transported to Ebensee through 40 towns and villages following the direction of the former death march. The opening commemoration of the “Mobile – Memory – Project” was held 17 April 2004 in the new Holocaust Museum in Budapest. The project, supported by the Austrian government, still exists; the last commemoration took place in in St Peter in der Au, Göstling and Bratislava Petržalka in 2007. See http://www.erinnern.at/bundeslaender/niederoesterreich/institutionen‐projekte/projekt‐mobiles‐erinnern (last accessed 15 May 2007).

27. See: www.holocausttaskforce.org (last accessed 15 May 2007).

28. For more details see Ruth Ellen Gruber, Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2002).