9:00 Lecture 2 September 1999
| Repressed Guilt – Forgotten Punishment: Nazi Trials in Austria |
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| The bringing to justice of Nazi war criminals is a necesarry pre-requisite for serious debate, when it comes to the period of National Socialist rule. In Austria, in the aftermath of the war,this judicial process was seen as being of only secondary significance. The positive effects in the sense of self- purification/examination were not noticeable, in fact the opposite occurred. The perpetrators could all too easily hide behind the image of Austria as being the first nation to become a ' victim' of National Socialism. It was only in 1991, that then the Bundeskanzler Franz Vranitzky acknowledged that Austrians were not 'only' victims, but perpetrators. Avenging the victims, and thus punishing the perpetrators through the Austrian judicial system, has become a subject for academic discourse, in the last few years. |
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Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider was born in Vienna in 1965. She is the academic head of the Central Austrian Research Office of Post- War Justice, and is a co-worker in the Austrian archive for resistance and research. This includes: 'Post- war justice and de-nazification', 'crimes against Hungarian Jews at the end of the war', "overcoming the past ", and the 'culture of remembrance'.
Public sources and other sources used: The proceedings from the peoples court, Vienna (1945-1955) as a primary historical resource. Project description Vienna 1993 [In conjunction with Winfred R. Garscha]
No reckoning: Nazi criminals, justice and society in europe after 1945, Vienna Liepzig 1998, pages 17-24
The Linzer peoples' court. The reckoning with Nazi war criminals in Upper Austria after 1945 in: Fritz Mayrhofer/Walter Schuster (edited), the National Socialist Linz [due in the year 2000] [in conjunction with Winfried R. Garscha] |
