Genocide & Society

80 years ago, Hitler´s Deutsches Reich annexed Austria, in the so-called Anschluss, without meeting any significant resistance. Quite contrarily, hundred thousands of Austrians celebrated (what they perceived as) the re-unification with Germany.

70 years ago, United Nations member states approved the Convention on the prevention and punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

In the 10 years in between, unfathomable atrocities of an unprecedented scale were commited.

In the 10 years in between, an estimated number of 6.000.000 Jews were brutally murdered.

In our project week (January 28th to February 1st), students of the 4BK tried to grasp the inconceivable. We asked ourselves fundamental questions like what does it mean to be human? How do „ordinary men“ turn into systematically torturing and murdering brutes? What scope of action was available to by-standers of the oppressive Nazi-regime? What are my personal boundaries in contemporary political discourse (speech and action)?

In order to dig deeper we visited regional (Gedenkstätte Steinhof, Stadtrundgang „Jüdisches Leben, Verfolgung und Vertreibung“) and national (Gedenkstätte Mauthausen) sites of remembering fascist crimes. Experiencing those places today helped us to reflect and question collective processes of remembering and suppressing our nation´s past.

While those – like us – who weren´t alive during Nationalsocialism obviously are not to blame, we certainly do have the responsibility to do our best to prevent the mechanisms put in place back then: discrimination, exclusion and persecution.

© 2019 Mag. Marina Burger