Austria

Austria was occupied and annexed by the German Reich in March 1938. Many Austrians welcomed this “Anschluss”, after which they were treated as Germans. On April 10, 1938, the “Act on the Reunification of Austria with the German Reich” was recognized by a referendum. Austria was integrated into the general administration of the German Reich and subdivided into seven Reichsgaue in 1939. In 1945, the Red Army took Vienna and eastern parts of the country, while the Western Allies occupied the western and southern sections.

In 1938, Austria had a total population of about 6,753,000 people. After the “Anschluss” [annexation], 206,000 of them, including refugees from Germany, were persecuted as Jews under the Nuremberg Laws. The Austrian Nazi Party, which had been outlawed before the “Anschluss”, however, did not target only the Jews, but also other ethnic, social and political groups, such as the Roma, their political opponents, the disabled, “anti-social elements”, and others. In the process, Austrians became involved in all types of Nazi crimes. In the first days and weeks of Nazi rule, Jews were subjected to brutal outbreaks of violence, including theft and murder. Subsequently, most Jews in the provinces were forced to move to Vienna or abroad. The “Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung in Wien” (“Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna”), founded by the SS in August 1938, not only served as a model for the organisation of the expulsions, but also for the mass deportations from October 1939 onwards. Similar institutions were founded in Berlin, Prague, and Amsterdam. After the November pogroms in 1938, about 6,500 mostly male Jews from Austria were imprisoned, and 4,000 among them were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. By the beginning of the war in September 1939 about 130,000 Jews fled from Austria. During the war, the remaining Jews in Austria were subjected to ever increasing isolation by new regulations, including forced transferal to smaller quarters and the introduction of the obligatory Jewish Star in 1941. Austrian Jews were deported to ghettos, concentration and extermination camps, among others to Nisko, Kielce, Opole, Theresienstadt/Terezín, Litzmannstadt/Łódź, Riga, Maly Trostinez/Maly Trascianiec and Auschwitz-Birkenau. In May / June 1944, Jewish prisoners, mostly from Hungary, were moved to camps in Austria, particularly to the Mauthausen concentration camp complex and forced labour camps along the Eastern border. Especially in March and April 1945 thousands of them died on death marches. Overall, around 66,000 Austrian Jews perished in the Holocaust.

There were about 11,000 Roma living in Austria before the war. They were subject to harsh racist campaigns throughout the first decades of the 1900s. Shortly after the “Anschluss” in March 1938, Roma and Sinti were deprived of their rights as citizens and several hundred were deported to concentration camps. Since 1939, many detention camps (so-called “Zigeunerlager” [“Gypsy Camps”]) were erected in several places all over Austria. The largest camp was Lackenbach, which held around 4,000 Roma from the Burgenland. In November 1941, 5007 Austrian Roma were deported to the ghetto in Litzmannstadt. No one survived: They died in the ghetto or were murdered in Kulmhof. Since March 1943, Sinti and Roma were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of the estimated 11,000 pre-war Roma, Sinti and Lovara population who were Austrian citizens in 1938, only 1,500 to 2,000 survived.

Austria exhibits a highly differentiated archival system without much centralization. In addition to the Austrian State Archives and its departments (governed by the Bundesarchivgesetz), each Austrian Bundesland has its own State Archives (each governed by the respective state Archivgesetz or statute). There are over 50 city archives. The religious communities in Austria, first and foremost bodies and organizations of the Catholic Church, have a rich array of archival institutions. There are also university archives, archives of noble houses (in particular the Liechtenstein archives) and a number of other, mostly topical archives as well as libraries holding archival material.

Key institutions identified by EHRI include the Austrian State Archives [Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/ Archiv der Republik] and the respective state archives of the Austrian Bundesländer [Federal States], which hold surviving files of central and regional administrative bodies as well as post-war investigations; the state-operated Archive of the Mauthausen Memorial, which contains files of the Mauthausen concentration camp complex; the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, which contains material from private hands as well as serving as a hub for highly pertinent copied files accrued from dozens of archives as well as the Forschungsstelle Nachkriegsjustiz, which has collected the scattered information on post-war trials for Nazi war crimes; the Archiv der IKG Wien, which contains the files of the Vienna Jewish community, which encompassed the vast majority of Austrian Jews; the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, with the holdings of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime and private collections of Holocaust researchers. EHRI has identified a number of general and Holocaust-relevant archival guides and online resources, a full list of which is available in the EHRI extensive report on Austria.

Disclaimer: The EHRI Extensive Report was updated in 2024.

A. EHRI approach to Austria: Pre-existing research and archival guides, expert support

In the case of Austria, EHRI could rely on a number of pre-existing works on the Holocaust. Highly useful for EHRI’s identification efforts was a general overview of archives in Austria, Germany and Switzerland:

[2009] Archive in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Ein Adressenverzeichnis (Münster: Ardey, 2009). Book + CD-ROM.

See also: [2023] Archive in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Adressenverzeichnis 2023/2024 (Münster: Ardey, 2023). Book + CD-ROM

The publications of the Austrian Historians’ Commission [Österreichische Historikerkommission], which are available and searchable online at http://www.boehlau.at/histkom, are also helpful. Furthermore, the following platform is an important and specifically Holocaust-relevant online resource:

NS-Quellen This resource is dedicated to issues of expropriation between 1938 and 1945, and to issues of restitution and compensation after 1945. The platform itself is an entry point. Researchers will find detailed information about resources that can provide them with valuable assistance in their research (for example: In which Austrian archives can I find documents on expropriation? Where can I conduct research on citizenship revocation?; or how? How can I find out whether a specific property or rental was “aryanised”?). The platform offers an overview of the legal foundations of both the Nazi expropriation of property as well as restitution and compensation from the Republic of Austria after 1945. It gives direct access to the original texts of all the laws relevant to this context. There are also bibliographic references and explanations of individual terms. The information is in German. See here: (http://ns-quellen.at)

Information about further digital resources and services in Austria can be found on the website of EHRI Austria: https://www.ehri.at/en/projects/

Among the more traditional research tools, the following guide is worth mentioning: [1995, 1991] Boberach, Heinz (Ed.), Inventar archivalischer Quellen des NS-Staates. Die Überlieferung von Behörden und Einrichtungen des Reichs, der Länder und der NSDAP, 2 Teile, (Munich: Saur, 1991, 1995). Also included in the commercial database “Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert Online: Nationalsozialismus, Holocaust, Widerstand und Exil 1933-1945”, http://db.saur.de/DGO.

B. Characteristics of the Austrian archival system and specific challenges

Austria exhibits a highly differentiated archival system without much centralisation. In addition to the Federal Archives and its departments (governed by the Bundesarchivgesetz), each of the Austrian Bundesländer has its own State Archive (each governed by the respective state Archivgesetz or statute). There are over 50 city archives. The religious communities in Austria, first and foremost bodies and organisations of the Catholic Church, exhibit a rich array of archival institutions. University archives, archives of noble houses (in particular the Liechtenstein archives) and a number of other, mostly topical archives as well as libraries holding archival material also exist.

Key institutions identified by EHRI include the Austrian State Archive (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/ Archiv der Republik), which has an online search engine (http://www.archivinformationssystem.at/suchinfo.aspx), and the respective state archives of the Austrian Bundesländer, which hold surviving files of central and regional administrative bodies as well as post-war investigations. Likewise important are the state operated Archive of the Mauthausen Memorial, which contains files of the Mauthausen concentration camp complex; the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW), which contains material from private hands as well as serving as a hub for highly pertinent copied files accrued from dozens of archives; the Archive of the Jewish Community Vienna (Archiv der IKG Wien), which contains the files of the Vienna Jewish community encompassing the vast majority of Austrian Jews; the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute; for Holocaust Studies (VWI); and the Forschungsstelle Nachkriegsjustiz, which has collected the scattered information on post-war trials for Nazi war crimes.

C. EHRI identification and description results on Austria

C.I. In Austria

In Austria, EHRI has identified over 200 state, municipal and church archives. While well over 25% of these archives are clustered in or around Vienna, there are also important archives in all Austrian Bundesländer.

C.II. In other countries

Outside of Austria, material relevant to the Holocaust in Austria can be found in a number of institutions, including the German Bundesarchiv and the Arolsen Archives in Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, Yad Vashem, the Central Archive of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem, New York/Berlin, and London, the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam as well as the National Archives of Hungary and the Hungarian Jewish Archives in Budapest, the Historical Jewish Institute in Warsaw, and the Jewish Museum in Prague.