DÖW

"I don't know of anything more important than knowing
that this archive exists. Far more people should know about it."
Elias Canetti
Nobel Literature Prize winner

Former resistance fighters, victims of Nazi persecution and committed academics set up the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes/DÖW) in 1963. Why the archive was founded relatively late - 18 years after the end of World War II - can be explained by the fact that the main influence on Austrian political life in the 1940s and 1950s was not exerted by anti-Fascists or those persecuted or driven into exile by the Nazis, but by those who had taken part in the war on Germany's side or had been members or supporters of the NSDAP. The main political parties let themselves be guided by the interests and attitudes of this "war generation," who, by the way, were not subjected to any psycho-political denazification programmes and, in many cases, persisted in their long held views and ways of thinking. Such individuals formed a majority of the population and were sceptical of, if not downright hostile towards, the very idea of Austrian resistance during the war. Former opponents of Nazism were seen to be "oath-breakers," "traitors," "criminals," "murderers" and often so slandered in public. The record of resistance in Austria was frequently called into question, trivialised or ignored. "The Documentation Centre of an Austrian resistance which never existed," sneered Staberl, Austria's most popular columnist, in Kronen Zeitung in 1971. Recognition of the resistance struggle was paid lip-service to by politicians at ceremonial gatherings. The resistance record was often used for purposes of Austrian foreign policy, for instance, to provide proof of Austria's own contribution to liberating itself (as prescribed by the Moscow Declaration of 1943) during the lengthy negotiations leading up to the signing of the Austrian State Treaty (1955). The activities of DÖW and the resistance research which it fostered, however, did not stem from the official Austrian "victim" standpoint (i. e. Austria being the first country to fall under the yoke of Hitler's aggressive foreign policy), but rather from the intention that the resistance fighters and others persecuted by the Nazis should describe their own struggle and assert themselves against those in society who were ignorant of their rôle or wished to suppress its memory. It was not until 1983 that DÖW - in the legal sense a registered association - established a foundation, which in subsequent years has been financed by the Federal Ministry for Science and the City of Vienna. Former members of the Austrian resistance and other victims of Nazi prosecution are still engaged in the day-to-day running of DÖW: they talk as "witnesses" (Zeitzeugen) to school classes, conduct young people through the archive and exhibition, thus underlining the value DÖW attaches to personal contact - a component rarely present in conventional libraries or archives, which only have books or documents to show to the interested visitor.

In the initial phase, when DÖW staff felt constrained to provide proof of the historical contribution of Austrian resistance in the face of spiteful and hostile attacks, the most important task consisted in preparing documents and historical texts as the basis of historical research. In 1970 work began on the book series Widerstand und Verfolgung in den österreichischen Bundesländern (resistance and persecution in the Austrian Federal States); up to the present 13 volumes (Vienna, Burgenland, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg and Tyrol) have appeared. Somewhat later, these documentary volumes were supplemented by the results of an oral history project - over 2,800 tapes of 900 interviews and four volumes of memoirs, documenting the resistance in, and persecution of, labour, Catholic-conservative, Jewish and Carinthian Slovenian circles. From the very beginning DÖW also took account of those forms of resistance under the Nazi regime which were not politically motivated in the narrow sense and was to the fore in sponsoring the first serious historical studies on the sufferings of Jewish and "gypsy" (Roma) citizens.

At an even later date - in the 1980s - DÖW began to include studies on the murder of physically and mentally handicapped in its research programme. Recognition of the fact that the Jews were, by far, the single largest group of victims and that the Holocaust, as murder on an industrial scale, was a unique crime in world history, has shaped DÖW studies in recent years. This thematic emphasis finds renewed expression in a major project, initiated by the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem and entitled Registration by Name: Austrian Victims of the Holocaust. This investigation of the fate of those Jews murdered and of more than 130,000 persons who were expelled or fled from Austria in 1938 has been one of DÖW's main tasks from the very outset. In the series Österreicher im Exil (Austrians in exile) eight volumes of documents (on France, Belgium, Great Britain, USA, Spain, Soviet Union, Mexico) have been published from 1984 to the present.

In the course of the controversial discussions on modern Austrian history unleashed by the "Waldheim case" DÖW was confronted by criticism from anti-Fascist quarters for the first time. This critique portrayed the activities of DÖW and of the Austrian resistance movement as having formal character, as being merely instrumental in boosting Austria's good image abroad; Austria, so the charge, does not need a Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, but one to document complicity with the Nazis or the history of National Socialism in Austria. Such views, voiced in the main by young, anti-Fascist historians, while directed at official Austria's "victim theory," indicated real research deficits in the country's community of Modern History experts, but unfortunately laid the blame at DÖW's door, forgetting that a small institute like DÖW, with its limited remit, cannot reappraise the history of National Socialism in Austria on its own. It is important, of course, to examine the reaction of the Austrian population to the Nazi occupation, its participation in the Nazi movement (researching the "culprits," so to speak), but DÖW cannot cope with all these tasks. However, some modest steps have been taken in this direction, e. g. a brochure on the war criminal Walter Reder or ongoing DÖW research (financed by Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) on cases brought before Vienna's Volksgerichte (people's court) against war criminals in the immediate postwar years.

From the mid-1970s onwards, DÖW began to come to terms with current right-wing extremism, not least because organizations and publications had slandered the Austrian resistance movement, played down its significance or even negated the war guilt of Hitler's Germany. In cooperation with Austrian university historians, the first edition of the comprehensive volume Rechtsextremismus in Österreich nach 1945 (right-wing extremism in Austria since 1945) was published in 1979. The book went through five editions up to 1981 and became the standard work on the subject. A fully revamped edition appeared in 1993 under the title Handbuch des österreichischen Rechtsextremismus and lays the emphasis - in a mixture of narrative and analysis - on the organized extreme Right in Austria, highlighting the leading rôle of Haider's FPÖ within right-wing extremism. A court action by Haider against the book's cover, along with a series of letter bombs sent by extreme right-wing elements at the time of the book's launching, made it a best-seller - three editions, 20,000 copies sold. By combatting modern-day right-wing extremism and thereby including Haider's FPÖ in its investigations, DÖW has inevitably, and to an unprecedented extent, been drawn into the political arena. The FPÖ, more than any other party, has unleashed in recent years sharp attacks and floods of polemics against DÖW: in 1991 no less than seven parliamentary questions were asked on the alleged "communist activities" within DÖW. DÖW has stated on several occasions that the anti-Fascism which it represents is intrinsically linked to the principles of pluralistic democracy and respect for human rights - a scale of values which cannot be reconciled with any dictatorial system or terrorism from right or left. That the democratic principles governing DÖW's activities are not just lip-service is demonstrated by the fact that it supports and initiates research into the fates of Austrians arrested in Stalin's Russia and is preparing a book of documents on this subject in the series Österreicher im Exil.

In recent years DÖW has also had to contend with historical "revisionism," a school of historical writing anchored in international neo-Nazi circles and pledged to rehabilitate National Socialism. As such propaganda was being spread in schools, DÖW felt it had to set the record straight for teachers and pupils. Following the publication of a small brochure on Emil Lachout, an Austrian who denied the existence of gas chambers in concentration camps, DÖW, in cooperation with the Ministry for Education, issued the booklet Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit, Wien 1991 (running amok against facts), thereby challenging the "arguments" of the "revisionists" (including their so-called chemical expertises) and disclosing the manipulations and falsifications of authors like Leuchter, Faurisson, Irving and others. In 1995 there appeared a fully revised edition, which took account of recent publications in Germany, under the title Wahrheit und "Auschwitzlüge" (truth and the Auschwitz lie). Especially in connection with such neo-Nazi propaganda, DÖW has time and again urged the application of legislation already on the statute books against neo-Nazi activities or demanded the revision of defective legislation to the same end. Such efforts were given decisive support by Simon Wiesenthal and led, in 1992, to an amendment to the law forbidding (neo-)Nazi propaganda and activities. Since then, leading Austrian neo-Nazis like Gottfried Küssel and Hans Jörg Schimanek Jr. have received draconian prison sentences - eleven and eight years respectively.

The archival documentation and library of DÖW have grown appreciably in the course of all the research mentioned above. Here a selection of important collections:

DÖW perceives as one of its most important responsibilities the need to inform and enlighten the general public, especially young people and school children. In cooperation with the Ministry for Education it plans many activities in schools: provides teachers with material for instruction, arranges Zeitzeugen to talk to school classes, organizes events and exhibitions in school buildings and sponsors essay competitions among teenagers. The generous assistance afforded by private sponsors such as Joseph and Mary Buttinger (New York) and Ernest Goldblum (Florida) enables DÖW to carry out its extensive research and pedagogical programmes. From the very beginning the founders of DÖW held the view that it should encompass all democratic movements in Austria and not be under the control of any one political party. The Board of Trustees (Kuratorium) and the Executive Committee (Vorstand), as well as all DÖW staff, belong to those political and ideological groupings which were either involved in the resistance or were themselves victims of persecution by the Nazis. They are bound together by the common belief that everything must be done to combat Nazi and racist propaganda. This attitude ensures that DÖW is not unduly influenced by changes or topical controversies in Austrian politics and it promotes an atmosphere of cooperation in the daily running of the archive. In this sense DÖW is an institute which embodies an Austrian community of interest, corresponding to the spirit of togetherness across party lines on which the foundations for the Second Republic were laid in 1945. Rudolf Kirchschläger, Federal President of Austria, gave this rôle full recognition in a speech at DÖW's AGM in 1986:

"I am taking this year's AGM as an opportunity to thank, in the name of the Austrian Republic, all those of you who have, by personal commitment, by assistance, by the giving of your time, contributed to the work of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. I also wish to state publicly that DÖW fully deserves the important function assigned to it in its protection of democracy and promotion of peace in our Republic."