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.

Éva Kovács honoured with Mensch Award 2024

On Friday, 3 May 2024, Éva Kovács (VWI Deputy Director) received one of the five 3rd annual Mensch Awards from the Mensch International Foundation for her contribution to Holocaust research. The ceremony was opened by Lukas Mandl and Mensch Foundation Founder Steven Geiger, with music by Shmuel Barzilai and keynotes by Jaron Engelmayer and Oskar Deutsch.

The other four awardees are Yvonne Oswald, Giora Bernstein, Daniel Landau, and Joshua Sinclair.

Gender Equality Plan (GEP) 2023-2026 for the VWI

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) is dedicated to researching and documenting anti-Semitism, racism and the Holocaust. In its educational activities, it promotes awareness and understanding of human dignity, strengthens the willingness to take responsibility for the social community as well as personal civil courage. The VWI strives to reflect gender equality and an appreciation of diversity in its organisational structure, its academic and programmatic work as well as in its representation and external communication.

Appreciation for diversity is reflected throughout the entire organisation in mindful and respectful interaction with one another. It is also expressed in the endeavour to integrate diversity into the personnel structure and in the selection of fellows. Finally, it helps to reflect the needs of people of different genders, ethnicities, religious traditions, social class, mental and physical abilities, language and regionality in research, teaching and communication. In line with the mission of the VWI, vigilance against anti-Semitism, racism and all forms of discrimination is an important ethical principle of everyday communication.

To ensure this mission, the VWI is committed to a comprehensive Gender Equality Plan, which can now be read in German here.

Obituary: Hella Pick (1929–2024) 

“1939: a Kindertransport refugee designated as an ‘Enemy Alien’. 2000: Commander of the British Empire. 2018: first an Honorary Doctorate from Sussex University and then the accolade of a new identity as a BBC podcast destined to remain for all eternity on a distant desert island. These are markers in a colourful life and a long career that offered a role model for women in journalism. It has been quite a journey.” (Hella Pick, Invisible Walls, p. 293)

Hella Pick died in London on the night of 4 April at the age of 94. As a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, she reported on turning points in the history of the 20th century – from the end of British colonial rule in West Africa, the highlights of the US civil rights movement and the student protests in Paris in 1968 to the end of the Cold War. Her memoirs read like a Who’s Who of the 20th century and provide insights into the struggle for recognition as a female journalist in a male-dominated field of work.

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies mourns the loss of the journalist, Wiesenthal biographer, contemporary witness, and advocate against forgetting. We remember Hella Pick’s visits, most recently in November 2022, when she presented her autobiography Invisible Walls. A Journalist in Search of Her Life.

It has been quite a journey.

Photo: © VWI

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.

Statement by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) On the Current Rise in Antisemitism Worldwide

The VWI condemns the drastic rise in anti-Semitic incidents of verbal and physical violence and the global threat to Jews following the terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israeli residential areas on 7 October 2023. On the night of 1 November 2023, the ceremonial hall in the Jewish section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery was set on fire.

Read more: Statement by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (Vwi) On the Current Rise in...

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.

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.