New Permanent Exhibition: AK Vienna Explores the Nazi History of Its Location

After all, from 1938, the "Central Office for Jewish Emigration" was located at the current site, as Director Silvia Hruška-Frank explained at a press conference on Monday. In the foyer of the building at Prinz-Eugen-Straße 20-22, 30 biographies of perpetrators are now on display.

Until 1954, the palace of the Rothschild banking family stood at the AK location. Under the direction of Adolf Eichmann, the expulsion and later the deportation of the Jewish population to the death camps were organized from the confiscated building, said the AK director. For the perpetrators, the expulsion was initially primarily a bureaucratic act. They were able to advance their careers within the Nazi terror apparatus.

New Permanent Exhibition in Vienna: Focus Also on Female Perpetrators

The exhibition was designed by historian Sophie Lillie and artist Arye Wachsmuth. In the AK foyer, considerable space has now been dedicated to it. The biographies of the perpetrators - women were also deliberately brought into focus - are printed in small text on a black background. Texts on the walls also prominently highlight the site's former role. Visitors should quickly grasp what it is about, so they can then engage more deeply with the topic, explained Wachsmuth.

Instead of the victims, the focus is on the perpetrators. Only through dealing with them did the engagement with Nazi history begin to hurt, explained Florian Wenninger, head of the Institute for Historical Social Research (IHSF). He suggested that other institutions in Austria could take the exhibition - and also Germany, where dealing with the perpetrator history of buildings is "very natural" - as an example.

Even before the new exhibition, the AK Vienna had dealt with the building's past, according to Hruška-Frank. For example, a photo was exhibited showing a person handing over papers. However, this did not show what really happened, namely the disenfranchisement of people.

AK Director Sees Moral Responsibility

There is a moral responsibility towards victims and descendants to engage with the dark chapters of history. Furthermore, engaging with history can encourage people to ask questions in a time of resurgent right-wing extremism, said Hruška-Frank. The AK also wants to bring the topic closer to the youth and offer workshops for young people, apprentices, and school classes.

At the same time, Hruška-Frank emphasized the positive role of the AK after 1945 - in 1946, it supported the first major anti-fascist exhibition "Never Forget" at the Künstlerhaus. During Austrofascism, the AK was aligned and destroyed by the Nazis in 1938, and many employees were later persecuted and murdered.

(APA/Red)

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