Memorial for the victims of the Gestapo Vienna
The memorial for the victims of the Gestapo Vienna (according to DÖW, also memorial for the victims of the Austrian struggle for freedom 1938-1945 according to the inscription) is located at Vienna Salztorgasse 6, at the point where the supplier entrance to the Hotel Métropole was once located . After the " Anschluss of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich , the state police headquarters in Vienna were located there . Numerous victims of National Socialism were brought into the house for interrogation through this back entrance or, after interrogation and torture, were brought to the Vienna Regional Court or concentration camp.
Gestapo control center Vienna
The Vienna Gestapo , based in the former Hotel Métropole on Morzinplatz, was the largest Gestapo agency in the German Reich with around 900 employees. It began its work on April 1, 1938 - just under three weeks after the German troops marched into Austria - and on the same day arranged for the first transport of Austrian prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp . Every day up to 500 people were summoned here for questioning or brought in after they had been arrested. A total of at least 50,000 people are believed to have been interrogated and tortured on Morzinplatz. Around 12,000 people are recorded in the present identification file of the Vienna Gestapo; Photos were taken and the "criminal class" was listed on "photography shows".
The Austrians arrested by the Gestapo were taken through the back entrance in Salztorgasse directly into the cellar, which served as a prison and torture chamber. Through physical and psychological violence, confessions and denunciations were extorted here - often resulting in death . All waves of arrests, which mainly concerned opponents of National Socialism, Jews and homosexuals, were coordinated by the Gestapo in the Hotel Métropole, as were the subsequent deportations to concentration camps. The Vienna control center was considered by the National Socialists to be “the most successful Gestapo headquarters in the Reich”. The resistance fighter Rosa Grossmann described how the Gestapo dealt with the prisoners: “And during my demonstrations I saw men in the corridors who were dragged to the elevators after being tortured, like half-slaughtered cattle from the slaughterhouse. Bleeding from wounds on the head and face. With swollen lips. ”In order not to betray any comrades, Grossmann threw himself from the 4th floor of the Hotel Métropole on October 23, 1943 after four days of torture. However, she survived seriously injured.
Foundation of the memorial
The former Hotel Métropole burned down on March 12, 1945 after being hit by bombs. As a result, the remains of the building were demolished in 1948. In 1968 a residential building was built on the same site, which was named after the concentration camp inmate and later Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl . At the rear of the new building, exactly where the supplier's entrance to the hotel was once, a sanctuary was set up by the victims' associations , including a memorial room for the victims of the Austrian struggle for freedom . In the same year, the victim associations had come together in the new working group of concentration camp associations and resistance fighters in Austria , the Weiheraum was the first result of the new cooperation.
Redesign in 2011
After extensive renovation, the memorial room was supplemented with an exhibition about victims and perpetrators of the Nazi regime and reopened on May 26, 2011 in a festive ceremony by Federal President Heinz Fischer . The redesign was carried out by the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW) on a scientific basis. However, there was a lack of funds to keep the memorial open regularly. However, committed residents of the Leopold-Figl-Hof and the surrounding area have founded a memorial site initiative that now makes the memorial room and the exhibition accessible every Thursday from 3 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. and provides information on the history of the site together with historians from the DÖW. In addition, the concentration camp association regularly organizes memorial hours in the premises in Salztorgasse.
Wiener Festwochen 2015
The Wiener Festwochen dedicated their Into the City 2015 program to the culture of remembrance and history politics: “Hotel Métropole. Giving memory a future ”was the title of an examination of“ the buried, forgotten and displaced - yesterday and today. ”A series of exhibitions, symposia, discussions, tours through the district and a film program were held around Morzinplatz. The memorial for the victims of the Gestapo Vienna was a central part of this series.
Web links
- Salztorgasse Memorial. Memorial for the victims of the Gestapo Vienna. DÖW , accessed on August 19, 2018 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance: No longer anonymous - photos from the identification file of the Gestapo Vienna, Gestapo victims . For the profile search Marie Fischer, geb. 30.1897 click on the button "More information" on the following page: [1]
- ^ Wiener Festwochen: Hotel Métropole , Schiene Into the City program , May 28 to June 21, 2015, p. 8.
- ↑ Dirk Rupnow, Heidemarie Uhl: Exhibiting contemporary history in Austria: museums, memorials, exhibitions , Vienna: Böhlau 2011, p. 131f.
- ↑ Brigitte Bailer : 50 Years Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance , from: Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Ed.), Victim fates. Resistance and Persecution under National Socialism. Yearbook 2013, Vienna 2013, p. 9f.
- ^ Wiener Festwochen: Hotel Métropole , Schiene Into the City program , May 28 to June 21, 2015, p. 18.
- ^ Concentration camp association: March 11, 2015 events of the ARGE victims' associations , accessed on May 29, 2015.