The Holocaust in Austria

In the 1930s, Jews flourished in Austria, with leading figures in the sciences, the arts, business, industry, and trades of all kinds.

In 1922, intending to mock vicious anti-semitism in Vienna where Jewish university students were routinely attacked, the Austrian Hugo Bettauer wrote a futuristic novel entitled, The City Without Jews, which turned out to be tragically prescient.

[12] In one instance, a number of Jews were rounded up on the Sabbath and forced to eat grass at the Prater, a popular Viennese amusement park.

[20][21] A well organised machinery of plunder, storage and resale, involving the Gestapo, the Vugesta, the Dorotheum auction house, various transporters and museums in Vienna moved artworks and other property seized from Jews into the hands of non-Jews.

[23] In May 1938, the Nazis allowed the Jewish community in Vienna to resume activities, with one intended goal - to organize and accelerate mass emigration of Jews from Austria.

The so-called Kindertransport started with the transport of the first 600 Viennese Jewish children after a meeting of Dutch organizer Geertruida Wijsmuller-Meijer with Eichmann who gave her permission on Dec. 3rd, 1938.

In October 1939, the deportation of Austrian Jews to Poland began, part of a larger plan to ultimately gather and restrict all of Europe's Jewish populace in one territory.

[25][26] As a result of the Holocaust, according to various sources, between 60,000 and 65,000 Austrian Jews lost their lives - almost the entire number of those who did not leave before the war.

On November 9, 2021 (i.e., on the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht), the Austrian government inaugurated a “Shoah Wall of Names Memorial” at a prominent location (Ostarrichi Park) in central Vienna.

The law applies to individuals who publicly deny, belittle, approve or justify the crimes of National Socialism.

The most famous case of prosecution in Austria for Holocaust denial was the arrest and trial of British writer of historical works David Irving in 2006.

The Austrian Nazi and, briefly, Chancellor of Austria, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was condemned to death at the Nuremberg Trials and executed in 1946.

Franz Josef Huber, the Gestapo chief responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Austrian Jews, worked for German intelligence after the war and was shielded from prosecution.

[48] For many years, Austria's official "first victim" historical stance removed the legal obligation to make reparations for Nazi crimes.

[52][53][54][55][56] The arrest and imprisonment of the author Stephen Templ, who had inventoried Nazi looted property in Vienna, was strongly criticized.

[57][58] In 2021, in response to criticism about Austria's restitution policies, The City of Vienna threatened to sue an American descendant of the Rothschild family for libel.