Holocaust education in Austria: A (hi)story of complexity and prospects for the future

Abstract

In Austria, activities for teaching about and remembering the Holocaust have concentrated mainly on National Socialism and its atrocities. Austria’s history of political anti-Semitism goes back to the nineteenth century, however, and has been widely and publicly acknowledged. It has always been linked to nationalistic tendencies that are still present today and rarely reflected upon, including the anti-Slavic and anti-Turkish attitudes that right-wing parties use to gain supporters. Vienna’s special place of remembrance, the Heldenplatz, with its monuments and history, is a useful place to begin examining Austrian identities and the course of collective Austrian ways of thinking. This chapter considers Austria’s daily politics and treatment of the past, and then turns to Holocaust education after the war, which has had an impressive impact after a late start, but also some drawbacks and problems. It then turns to the lack of serious research about memorials in Austria, as compared with Germany, and presents initial results from a project that started in spring 2009 to examine knowledge gains and attitude changes among students after they visit the Mauthausen concentration camp.