Project "Registration by Name: Austrian Victims of the Holocaust"

In charge of the project: Dr. Gerhard Ungar, Mag. Gisela Wibihail

Further information:erfassung@doew.at

Project "Registration by Name" online
Database (about 62.000 names) and documentation on the Shoah of the Austrian Jews
In March 1987, Yitzhak Arad, chairman of the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel, approached the Austrian Federal Chancellor, Franz Vranitzky, with the request that Austria create a memorial for the Austrian Jews who had perished under the Nazi-regime, just as the Federal Republic of Germany and other European countries had already done. Following a feasibility study, the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Science and Research in 1992 to compile a list of names as well as dates of birth and death, of all Austrian Jews who were killed during the rule of the Nazi regime.

Subsequently the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for the Victims of National Socialism, and several Austrian federal provinces supported the project. The Jewish community in Vienna, Yad Vashem and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Arolsen International Tracing Service, the memorials of the former concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald, the University of Wroclaw, the Austrian State Archive, the sections 43 and 12 of the municipal administration of Vienna (assistance for victims), the Shalom association, the Bezirksmuseum Landstrasse, the Institute for the History of Jews in Austria, the Natural History Museum of Vienna, and various other institutions have contributed to this project by providing material. Data and experiences were exchanged with researchers at similar projects. And finally, many survivors of the Holocaust, relatives and descendants of victims contributed information and documents.

For the purposes of the project, Holocaust victims are defined as all persons who by the racist "Nuremberg Laws" (1935) or other National Socialist directives or the interpretation thereof were excluded from society as Jews and subsequently were killed by force or circumstances induced by violence. Not only those Jewish men, women and children who held Austrian citizenship or "Heimatrecht" in 1938, but also all those who lived as Jews in Austria are considered Austrians, since a substantial part of the Jews who lived in Austria at the time were stateless or held foreign citizenship. Therefore, the project records the fate of all those who between 1938 and 1945 were murdered or committed suicide (including Jewish victims of euthanasia) in Austria or who were deported from Austria and did not survive. Victims also include Jews who fled from Austria, and were traced by the Nazis in other European countries, murdered there or abducted to extermination and concentration camps. Jewish people deported to Austria (concentration camp inmates, Hungarian slave laborers, among others) are not considered in this context.

The project is not yet complete. The list made accessible to the public here containing the names and dates of the victims is only provisional and is continuously being updated. Mistakes and inaccuracies are bound to happen. We are grateful for any information, additions, and correction.

Questionaire campaign: Within the scope of the project, the DÖW is conducting a questionaire campaign. People who can contribute about Austrian Holocaust victims are asked to fill out a questionaire.

Publication:
Florian Freund/Hans Safrian, Expulsion and Extermination. The Fate of the Austrian Jews 1938-1945. Project "Registration by Name: Austrian Victims of the Holocaust", issued by the Austrian Resistance Archive, Vienna 1997.


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