030393 SE Eichmann in Vienna and Jerusalem: Persecution of Jews, Extermination Camps, Post-War Justice (2021W)

In cooperation with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kerstin von Lingen, M.A., institute of contemporary history, University of Vienna.
Trials for the crimes committed in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz have taken place in Jerusalem, Frankfurt and Vienna since 1961. After 1945, Holocaust survivors Hermann Langbein and Simon Wiesenthal had campaigned vehemently - not only in Austria - for the punishment of Nazi perpetrators; the punishment complex concerning the Auschwitz extermination camp was ultimately due to these efforts to collect evidence and witness statements and to forward them to the public prosecutor's office. Despite the efforts, the results were staggering: Langbein and Wiesenthal had collected material against a total of 70 Austrian Auschwitz perpetrators, 4 of whom went to trial and none of whom were convicted.
In connection with the crimes at Auschwitz, Adolf Eichmann played a key role. The head of the Vienna "Central Office for Jewish Emigration" had devised an exemplary efficient way for the Nazi persecution of Jews to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Jewish victims, to expel them, to loot them, to deport them to the camps and to have them killed there. Eichmann's bureaucratic zeal, aptly described by Hannah Arendt with the striking term "banality of evil," started in Vienna, and then spread the "model" throughout occupied Europe.
In the seminar, the punishment of Nazi crimes will be researched on the basis of Eichmann and his important henchmen as well as their trials in court, and reflected on with the help of files on the post-war trials. In addition, the archive of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, VWI, contains documents of the Jewish Community, IKG Vienna, which document the persecution, expulsion and deportation of Jews. Among them are the case files of the "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal, which prove how difficult it was to open Holocaust proceedings in Austria.