Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies

Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies
legal form	Research institute
founding	2009
founder	Simon Wiesenthal , Ingo Zechner , Avshalom Hodik, Anton Pelinka , Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Bertrand Perz
Seat	Vienna
main emphasis	Holocaust research
method	Research - documentation - communication
Action space	Europe
people	Greta Anderl, René Bienert, Sandro Fasching, Kinga Frojimovics, Nicole Goll, Barbara Grzelak, Jan Kiepe, Éva Kovács, Béla Rásky, Philipp Rohrbach, Jana Starek, Marianne Windsperger
Employees	9 employees, 8 fellows
Website	www.vwi.ac.at

Press conference on the foundation with Ingo Zechner , Avshalom Hodik , Anton Pelinka , Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Bertrand Perz (from left to right) in June 2006

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, VWI) is a research center in Vienna designed by Simon Wiesenthal and scientists from home and abroad , which is dedicated to the research, documentation and communication of all questions that Concern anti-Semitism , racism , nationalism , ethnicization and the Holocaust , including its prehistory and consequences. It has been in full operation since October 2012 and is funded equally by the City of Vienna and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research .

History of origin

The Jewish Community Vienna (IKG) seized in 2002, together with many well-known institutions to establish an international Shoah research center in Vienna the initiative. Simon Wiesenthal , who died in September 2005, was still personally involved in the conception .

In December 2002 the City of Vienna agreed to participate in the financing of the project to the same extent as the Republic of Austria. In March 2008, in a ministerial lecture, the support of the VWI by the Republic of Austria was promised. As a result, office operations began in spring 2009.

In the preliminary phase of 2010 and 2011, the foundation stone was laid for a scientific specialist library and its own archive (based on the holocaust-relevant documents of the IKG archive), various event formats - lectures, book presentations, conferences and workshops as well as media interventions in public spaces in memory of the Shoah - designed and tested and finally a long-term development plan developed and a scientific research program prepared.

organization

carrier

VWI workshop Alma Mater Antisemitica , 2012

The sponsoring organization of the VWI is an association to which the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, the Documentation Center of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime ( Simon Wiesenthal Archive ), the documentation archive of the Austrian Resistance DÖW, the Institute for Contemporary History of the University of Vienna , the Institute for conflict research , the Jewish Museum Vienna and the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies . After disputes about the use of the archives of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, the Institute for Conflict Research and the IFK left the sponsoring association in November 2009, and the representatives of these institutions on the executive board also left the institute's governing body.

Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI); Vienna, Rabensteig 3

After the dispute had been settled and the loan agreement for the use of the Holocaust-relevant parts of the IKG archive to be used by the new board of directors, the sponsoring association became the International Alliance for Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) and the Center for Jewish Cultural History at the University of Salzburg in early 2010 expanded. The establishment of the institute and the preparations for the commencement of full operation were carried out on the basis of the step-by-step plan developed in the foundation phase. With the start of the fellowship program, with the arrival of the first international scholarship holders in autumn 2012, this full operation could begin.

Bodies

The executive board of the VWI is sent by the supporting organizations, the executive board has the highest decision-making authority in all organizational matters of the VWI. Anton Pelinka was elected as chairman of the board , his deputies were Bertrand Perz and Avshalom Hodik. On January 1st, 2009 Ingo Zechner was appointed managing director of VWI.

Invitation to the Simon Wiesenthal Conference 2012

In November 2009, after unsuccessful negotiations with the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG) about the use of the archives administered by the Kultusgemeinde, which were an important basis for the planned research work of the VWI, several board members (including the chairman Anton Pelinka), the managing director Ingo Zechner and 12 of the 15 members of the International Scientific Advisory Board returned in protest against the IKG's approach. According to the presentation of the new chairman Georg Graf, elected in the VWI general assembly on November 5, 2009, at the VWI press conference on January 12, 2010, the loan agreement signed by him between the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien and the VWI literally corresponds to that drawn up by his predecessors Version: The arguments and the resignation of Anton Pelinka were - according to Graf in response to a request - rather due to personal conflicts between Pelinka and the President of the IKG, Ariel Muzicant. Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Ariel Muzicant were elected as deputy chairman of the board in November 2009 . In 2018, both Georg Graf and Ariel Muzicant left the board. Gerhard Baumgartner took over the chairmanship on an interim basis and was replaced by Terezija Stoisits in 2019 . Claudia Prutscher and Gerhard Baumgartner were elected deputy chairmen.

On January 1, 2010, the Viennese contemporary historian Béla Rásky took over the scientific and administrative management of the institute. Since October 2012 he has been assisted by the Budapest sociologist Éva Kovács for the research work of the institute. As the scientific program director, she is also responsible for the scientific supervision of the fellows doing research at the institute . In addition to the office management, the VWI team also includes other employees.

The International Scientific Advisory Board plays a key role in scientific issues. This includes at least nine internationally recognized experts, of whom a maximum of three may work in Austria. According to the company, special emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary orientation. Like the board of directors, the advisory board is elected for three years by the general assembly of the VWI. The advisory board, which meets once a year, always at the beginning of the academic year, for consultations in Vienna, but continuously accompanies the scientific activities of the institute, has the following members in January 2020 (in alphabetical order):

Nanci Adler ( NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- and Genocidestudies , Amsterdam)
Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs ( Uniwersytet Jagielloński , Kraków)
Peter Black ( United States Holocaust Memorial Museum )
Susanne Heim ( Institute for Contemporary History , Munich-Berlin)
Robert Graham Knight (Loughborough University, Leicestershire)
Dan Michman (International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem , Jerusalem; Bar-Ilan University , Ramat Gan)
Anthony Dirk Moses ( European University Institute , Florence)
Dirk Rupnow ( University of Innsbruck )
Irina Scherbakowa ( Memorial , Moscow)
Sybille Steinbacher ( Fritz Bauer Institute , Frankfurt am Main)
Dominique Trimbur ( Foundation for the Mémoire de la Shoah )
Yfaat Weiss ( Simon Dubnow Institute , Leipzig)

Main areas of activity

Searching for traces in a forgotten place : former synagogue Vienna 20, Kaschlgasse - November 9th

According to the homepage, the activities of the VWI are based on the three pillars of research, documentation and communication. In these areas, the institute is dedicated to all questions relating to anti-Semitism, racism and the Holocaust, including its history and consequences. Research at VWI is international and interdisciplinary and takes place in two forms: as part of the fellowship program and in the form of research projects of flexible duration.

Since November 2010 the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Research (VWI) has been represented in the consortium of the EU project European Holocaust Research Infrastructure together with 19 other scientific institutions from 13 countries. Preparations are currently underway for the establishment of a European research consortium to study the history of the Holocaust within the framework of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) .

VWI Newsletter Cover 2014/01

The aim of the documentary work of the VWI is to bring together previously scattered thematically relevant archive holdings, their preservation and indexing using finding aids . A first step in this direction is the collaboration on the online platform, which the VWI commissioned the Vienna Association for Scientific and Cultural Services and which was completed in March 2011. The digitization of the holocaust-relevant parts of the IKG archive began with work on the so-called Jerusalem holdings of the archive in September 2010. The scopeArchiv archive database , which is widely used in Austria, is used to develop the archive . The holdings from the Simon Wiesenthal Archive are also continuously indexed and made more and more accessible for research. The library of the institute is a publicly accessible reference library, the catalog of which can be viewed via the Austrian network library . The focus of the collecting activity in Austria is on books that are difficult to grasp on the research focus of the institute. It comprises around 14,000 volumes and is constantly being expanded.

Invitation to show the VHA interview

The VWI Fellowship program started in autumn 2012. Since then, two senior, two research and four junior fellows have been researching at the institute for between six and eleven months per academic year. In 2019, another fellowship was set up in cooperation with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University ; from the 2020/21 academic year, the Gerda Henkel Foundation will fund a research fellowship from the VWI. The research methods, problems and results of all fellows will be discussed in internal seminars and publicly accessible colloquia during their stay in Vienna. After completing her fellowship, the institute's electronic journal, which has been published since autumn 2014, has published S: IMON - Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON under the heading "Articles" the research results of the fellows, which have been subjected to a peer review process.

The call for applications for the fellowships usually takes place at the end of a calendar year. A sub-committee of the international scientific advisory board decides on the award of the research grants in the spring of each year.

Since autumn 2014, the institute has also published two book series in the Vienna publishing house new academic press. With monographs, the VWI study series is devoted to researching important aspects of the institute's subject area, while the VWI's contributions to Holocaust research summarize the lectures at the institute's conferences and workshops. By February 2020, a total of five volumes were published in the study series and eight volumes in the VWI articles; more are in preparation.

The annual VWI in Focus newsletter provides information on the institute's ongoing activities.

Location

At the beginning of 2017, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) moved into new office space at Rabensteig 3 in downtown Vienna. After extensive renovation work, the VWI not only has adequate office space available for staff and fellows, the institute's extensive reference and specialist library is now properly set up and usable. In addition, Simon Wiesenthal's personal archive was transferred from his former office in the nearby Salztorgasse to the new building and can now be viewed here for research purposes. In addition, the Holocaust-related holdings of the archive of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien were added in 2018. The new premises also offered the opportunity to set up a small museum on the ground floor. The future of remembrance - Museum Simon Wiesenthal is intended to bring the work of Simon Wiesenthal and his drive closer to the visitors and thus provide a didactic foundation for the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies located on the floors above.

Events

Further events of the VWI are the Simon Wiesenthal Conferences, which now take place every year at the end of a calendar year. In 2011, with Scores of Remembrance , they dealt with the reappraisal of the Holocaust in contemporary music, followed in 2012 with When the Holocaust Had No Name, the early reappraisal of the Holocaust between 1944 and 1955. In December 2013, the institute organized together with the Washington United States Holocaust Memorial Museum held the Simon Wiesenthal Conference under the title Collaboration and Complicity in Eastern Europe in World War II and in the Holocaust in the Vienna Palais Trautson . The Simon Wiesenthal Conference 2014 - in cooperation with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) - was dedicated to coming to terms with the Holocaust on television in Eastern and Western Europe and the USA, with the 35th anniversary of the broadcast of the TV series Holocaust - The History of the Family Weiss served as an immediate occasion on ORF. The 2015 conference focused on anti-Semitism on Europe's peripheries, especially its influence on anti-Semitic tendencies in Europe's centers. In December 2017, the annual Simon Wiesenthal Conference at Palais Epstein was dedicated to (Un) Glorious Victims? The paradigms of European memory politics put to the test the different victim narratives in European societies after 1945.

Homepage of S: IMON

In the middle of the year, at the end of May or the beginning of June, the VWI also organizes a two-day workshop-like conference, usually in cooperation with other scientific institutions. In June 2012, Alma Mater Antisemitica at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna devoted itself to anti-Semitism at the European universities of the interwar period, Heritage Recovered in May 2013 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences to the Holocaust in Jewish archives, Storylines and Blackboxes 2014 with the Institutes for Contemporary History of the University of Vienna and for European Ethnology of the University of Vienna the questions of the discursive processing of experiences of violence. In 2015 the new scientific subject of forensic archeology was discussed, in 2016 the question of the emergence of the modern concept of citizenship in the wake of the reshaping of Europe after 1919 was discussed together with the Jewish Museum in Prague . In June 2016, a workshop on Hannah Arendt took place in cooperation with the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies . In June 2019, the regular VWI workshop at the headquarters of the company headquarters of the Austrian Federal Railways at Vienna Central Station was devoted to the logistics and planning of the deportations, comparing perspectives on the organization of the route to the extermination.

The lectures and conference contributions can be accessed four to six weeks after the event on the VWI YouTube channel - unless the speakers do not agree to them - in accordance with the institute's open access policy .

At the beginning of 2013, the events of the VWI were enriched by a further format: Since then, unknown, forgotten or controversial films with an introduction or a subsequent discussion in the Vienna Admiralkino have been shown once or twice a year as part of the VWI Visuals series .

As part of a project funded by the Berlin Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future , the VWI is working on an examination of the Jewish-Hungarian forced labor in Vienna in 1944/1945. The results of this work are presented on the project homepage.

In 2014, 2016 and 2018 the institute took part in the Long Night of Research organized by the Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy , and since 2017 the institute has been taking part regularly in the Long Night of the Museums of the ORF.

On six Sunday afternoons in January / February 2020, VWI and the Austrian Film Museum presented the eleven-hour interview with Simon Wiesenthal, which the Salzburg historian Albert Lichtblau conducted for the Visual History Foundation in November 1997 .