Holocaust Tourism

Welcome to Theresienstadt.  150,000 people were imprisoned here, including tens of thousands of children.  Roughly 90,000 prisoners went on to their deaths by cattle car in the Treblinka and Auschwitz murder factories.  33,000 starved painfully to death, died of illness or were murdered in individual acts of brutality by the SS.  The Nazi concentration camp and ghetto are also known by their Czech name, Terezín.

Souvenirs

Could we interest you in a souvenir fridge magnet?  We have a number of designs.  The German "Bier Stein" magnet with the Star of David on it is a classy reminder of your visit.  It's actually the Star from the garden of remembrance: look you can see the stones under it that Jewish visitors have left as a sign of respect.  Or, the one with the cycle sign showing "this way to Terezín" might look nice in your kitchen back at home.  They're a bargain: £1.60!  You could buy one as gifts for your friends and family.

Theresienstadt Souvenirs

I wish it were all a bad, tasteless, unthinkable joke.  But it's not.  I'm just back from there and Auschwitz with a group of students on a holocaust education tour.  As you enter the car park at Theresienstadt you are greeted by a sign with SOUVENIRS in large letters and an advertisement for the crystal shops.  Only after that sign has greeted you, do you see the one directing visitors to the Jewish ghetto (left) or the small fortress with the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign on it (right).  The souvenir shop has a two metre sign announcing it sells Bohemia Glass, Souvenirs, Jewellery, Playing Cards and Militaria.  "Militaria" at a place where the SS killed thousands of civilians.

Playing cards at Theresienstadt

I've long been unsettled by the weight of tourists descending on the camps.  The backpackers' bible "Let's Go" apparently used to tell people that if they had time for only two things in Munich, they should make it out to Dachau, and the Hofbräuhaus.  There we have the Munich Experience in a nut-shell: a concentration camp and a tacky tourist beer hall.  It's become a tick-box item: a must for any visitor on a tour of Europe to visit the nearest convenient Nazi killing site. 

I wonder about the motivations of those who come: is it genuine remembrance, is it a spiritual pilgrimage, is it to learn, is just to say you've been, or is to satisfy a ghoulish curiosity.  I'm sure for many it's a combination of all those things, though I doubt many would own up honestly to the latter two.  I fear for most the visit is a bit like Disney in reverse: you're not going to be thrilled and made happy; you're going to be upset.  I guess it shows that you are a sensitive being, who cares.  Then in the evening, it's back to the beer. 

Learning

In terms of the didactic value, I'm well aware that people learn in different ways.  There's absolutely nothing in the museum at any of these sites that you couldn't learn by watching a TV documentary, looking on the internet, reading a book, or visiting one of the excellent exhibitions at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Holocaust Museum in DC, the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin, or our own superb Imperial War Museum in London.  I think it's fair to assume that if anyone is bothering to go out to a camp, they're familiar with the background.  It's not that likely they'll come away saying "Wow, the Germans murdered 6 million Jews.  I just didn't know that!"

"Fallen Leaves" at the Jüdisches Museum Berlin

For some actually being there, and seeing the place, might have an effect that the other methods of learning don't.  If we're really honest though, that has to concern a very few people.  Let's consider what there actually is to see.  In most of the camps (I've taken groups to 10 different ones myself, over the years, from Westerbork to Treblinka) there's a big empty space, sometimes huge memorials, and a visitor centre/museum.  The wooden buildings were long since pulled down, and the extermination camp gas chambers were almost all destroyed by the Germans at the end of the War.  In Dachau or Buchenwald the barbed wire has been nicely replaced with fresh supplies, and the watch towers are always kept newly painted.  At Birkenau everything is covered in grass, where before there was mud.  At Bergen-Belsen everything is gone: the place is turned over to nature and there are mounds where the dead lie.

Giant Menorah at Mauthausen

I'm not sure what the few iconic "sights" that remain at the camps actually teach anyone.  We're all so familiar from photographs with the train lines with the watch tower behind it at Birkenau, or the Arbeit Macht Frei signs at Auschwitz, that I wonder if it makes the slightest difference to anyone, in terms of actual learning, to see them in real life.

The same goes for the piles of shoes, spectacles or mounds of hair.  Yes, you're aware that these things each belonged to an individual, whose life was so brutally cut short.  But you already knew that.  I fail to see what viewing some of them in a room actually adds to understanding.  The picture below is powerful enough.  It is undeniably poignant and needs to be seen.  However, you are viewing it on the Internet, or can see it in any book.  You don't need to go to Auschwitz to get any better comprehension of the vastness, or of the personal nature, of the crime.

Shoes

We can't imagine what the camps looked like in 1942 or 1944: the piles of dead bodies, the selections, the crippling hunger, the illness, the human excrement, the desperation and the cruelty.   We wouldn't want to see them as they were, so what does visiting the santitised version actually add to our knowledge of the time, and the personal lessons we can learn from the period?

Dignity and Respect

These places are both killing places and cemeteries.  At Dachau this summer I watched a teenage boy standing in the centre of the Appelplatz where prisoners were forced to stand for hours in baking heat or freezing cold to break their spirits.  He was taking selfies.  It took him a long time to get the lighting and reflection right.  I do hope he got the right balance of "cute" and "upset" for his Instagram.  Perhaps a mournful tear was involved.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world, followed closely by Treblinka, where at least 800,000 were murdered.  I know two Auschwitz survivors personally, both of whom lost close family there.  Even disregarding the behaviour of idiots such as the guy above, I find it hard to see how the dignity of those who died can be preserved with the sheer weight of people coming out to some of the camps.  I stood at the exit of Auschwitz I last week, watching group after group of teenagers came out, plenty of them laughing and goofing around.  It didn't use to be like this: you had to really "want" to go to any of the camps in Poland.  Nowadays there are cheap flights, easy access and all the commercial operators described below.

Auschwitz as a whole is simply sinking under the weight of all the visitors.  This was a weekday, off-season, in October.  The guide told me that sixteen tour buses just from Norway were booked in the following day alone.  1.33 million visitors came last year, which was a 12% increase on 2012.  1.4 million are expected this year.  That's nearing 4000 on average (roughly 100 tour buses) per day, with more coming on a busy peak season day.  Auschwitz-Birkenau is apparently now Poland's single biggest "visitor attraction".  

March in, collect headphones, do tour, back on bus. Repeat.

There is very little opportunity to afford the victims any form of personal respect or dignity, or to have individual reflection, when you are being shoved around in groups at the site with a set of headphones on.  Groups stand close to each other, jostling shoulder to shoulder, as the guides provide their often robotic commentary (I understand why they don't hardly ever show human emotion: working in this environment a strong detachment is a necessary defence mechanism).

Unlike somewhere like Pearl Harbor, there's no attempt to limit tour numbers: everyone just piles on in to hear the stories of atrocities, individual cases of murder, or to file inside the one remaining gas chamber.  No one is sure whether the scratch marks in the walls are original or not.  I wonder whether a system of regulation, i.e. a limited number of places being available on any day at any camp, wouldn't be a very sensible solution.

Buses arrive every couple of minutes to the death camp

The only opportunity you have to breathe is at the vast terrain of Auschwitz II (Birkenau), but most of the commercial tours allow you only 15 minutes there.  That might explain why few bother to go all the way down to the location of the actual gas chambers and cemeteries.  Or, perhaps, it's simply they agree with the girl I overheard who wanted a golf cart because it's just a bit too far to walk.

Commercialisation

Visits to the camps can be lucrative businesses it seems.  In Cracow you can hardly go anywhere without seeing posters for operators offering "all inclusive" trips out to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Given entry to the camp is free, that is a little puzzling.  The museum does charge a fee for its guides, but it's only £55 total for a group of 30, for the full 3.5 hour tour.  That works out at £1.80 a head.  The "excursions" from Cracow are charged out at £25 upwards, with transport provided on a 50 seater coach.  Trips to Auschwitz-Birkenau appear alongside fun tours of the Old Town and the Wieliczka Salt Mines.  It's a must for any stag or hen party in town - and again, would that were some tasteless joke.

In Germany the camps are, at least, apparently far more mindful of the acute criticism they would attract if items such as the Terezín fridge magnets were permitted to be sold in the concentration camp car parks.  For some unfathomable reason, the town of Oświęcim (present day Auschwitz) has  no such qualms about allowing a huge pizza, burger and other fast food complex to be built and exist directly opposite the main entrance to the camp car park.

The bus on the right is in Auschwitz I car park

Wait for it... why there's even a set of amusement machines inside.  After all, we all need to have a go on a pin-ball machine, having heard how painful and terrifying a death it was being crammed into a dark gas chamber, breathing rat poison into their lungs for 20 minutes, until they collapsed down dead upon the bodies of their elderly parents or children.  This is well under 100 metres from the entrance to Auschwitz I camp.  Just across from here there's a souvenir shop.  A set of 20 postcards of the camp is only £3.00 and you can buy lots of other stuff from around Poland too!

This commercialisation is grotesque.  It leaves me feeling sick writing about it.  Oświęcim and Terezín are towns where the inhabitants were expelled from their homes at gunpoint by the Germans, when the camps were built.  It is their right to come back and to bring their families up here, work here, and make their living here.  That could be done without the municipal authorities permitting fast food restaurants or tacky gift shops in such sensitive locations, so close to the sites.

Personal Irony

I'm aware of the enormous irony of this post, given the fact that I personally lead students on tours of the camps and have done so now for 20 years.  Every year, however, I become more and more uneasy with the fact that the camps are becoming tourist sites.

It is enormously and critically important that this chapter is never forgotten, which is ultimately I suppose why I keep on coming.  I can see the "positive" argument for so many people wanting to come here.  It's better I guess than the opposite, which would be no one caring and no one being interested in the subject at all.

Some visitors may get something profound out of their visit: if only one person in a hundred reflects on the nature of their own prejudices as a result of coming to a camp and does something about it, then that is a good thing.  I still can't get away from the feeling, though, that the vast bulk of visitors will learn little here that they didn't know before, or that I couldn't communicate without an actual visit.

More importantly, the sheer volume of them is utterly destroying the dignity of a place that means so much still to survivors, their descendants, and the family members of the victims.  I'm part of that and I'm very troubled by it.

Closing the Camps

One aspect of the ongoing crime that the 3rd Reich committed when it perpetrated the holocaust was the fact that it built many of the camps on foreign soil.  The Germans came to Poland, for example, created killing centres, murdered millions, and then left.  The Poles are now stuck with this in their country, and the obligation to keep up the buildings in all likelihood for eternity.  I don't envy them that at all.

For the first time in my life, for all the reasons above, I find myself having sympathy with the view others have expressed that when the last survivor dies, thought should be given to closing the camps and letting them go back to nature.  The chapter must clearly never be forgotten, but it can be kept open very effectively through museums, lessons, documentaries and books. 

May their souls rest in peace

All photos are my own.

UKIP: Our Last Hope

What more can be said about the apparent phenomenal rise of UKIP in the polls?

2004: something new

10 years ago I was on holiday in Poland and remember the shocked German news reports stating that UKIP had obtained 16% of the vote.  They had returned 12 MEPs.  "These aren't just Eurosceptics" they informed the audience: "They've decided they're not sceptical: they want to leave the EU."  The rest of the EU were well used to decades of Tory Eurosceptics attempting to scupper anything that came out of Europe, but this was something new.

The thought of leaving the EU seemed ridiculous, just at the point where most of the continent was celebrating the accession of 10 new countries.  Yet here we are in 2014 with poll predictions of upwards of 30% of the vote for UKIP, and our PM pledging an in/out referendum on the EU if the Tories win the general election in 2015.

Since 2004 UKIP has gone from a single issue anti-EU protest party to a catch-all repository for the disaffected right wing vote.  The droning on about EU issues seem to have been replaced to a large extent by a much broader anti-immigration platform.  Anti-islam feeling runs high and a dislike of anything not "English" (its appeal is specifically strong in England, not in the rest of the UK). 

The language of UKIP supporters

I'm very interested by the language that UKIP supporters use on social media, and the psyche of fear that appears to motivate them.  Much of it is incredibly dramatic, particularly when discussing immigration.  The country is "overrun".  Schools and hospitals are "full".  The "indigenous people" are being "pushed out".  England is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Wow, is it really?

When you fly over this green and pleasant land of ours, it's hard to tally the rhetoric with the reality.  Most of the country isn't built on.  No, actually that's wrong.  Almost ALL the country is not built on.  Any guesses as to the exact figure? 60%? 30%? 15%? Actually only 2.27% of England's land is built on.  "Britain's mental picture of its landscape is far removed from reality".  It's actually a remarkably peaceful, green, spacious, still comparably well-off country.

It doesn't matter though: you can reason about how immigration is a necessary thing for an economy, and an incredibly positive thing for a society.  You can talk about the financial contribution that immigrants make in fiscal terms.  You can point out that we have huge amounts of space and we're not about to sink into the North Sea under the weight of millions of newly arrived Romanians.

You simply hit a brick wall of willful, entrenched ignorance, fear and always an underlying belief that the English are somehow superior.  It's as if decades of scare-mongering in the right wing tabloid press has finally soaked in and nothing will dissipate it.  It's pure emotional reaction and the language reflects it.  Let's not doubt it, though: there's real anger, and there's real fear amongst many of these people.  A peril has been identified that goes way beyond the original target of the EU.

Farage: Our Last Hope

Having identified an apparent terrible peril the country faces, the next step is to suggest a solution.  The country has been let down by the traditional parties, but there is an alternative.  Much of the rhetoric I've observed demonstrates an almost Messianic like belief in UKIP to solve matters.

UKIP's policies seem quite ill-defined and apparently to mean many things to many different people.  Is it an anti-establishment party, a libertarian party, or a pro-City, authoritarian right wing party?  In some respects it doesn't matter.  It's just important to note that for some of those 30%+ voters it's not simply a protest party: it's the solution to all their woes.

The party is of course inexorably linked with the personality of its leader, Nigel Farage.  It's he who's on the TV endlessly.  I doubt few general members of the public could name anyone else in the party (except perhaps Roger Helmer MEP).  There's a cult like worship of the affable chap in his tweed jackets, enjoying a warm pint of English beer.  He's a man of the people.  He will lead us to a better place.  He is the "Leader" - note the capitalised L - who is the only politician who truly believes in Britain and the British people.

A Historical Comparison

I'm actually both fascinated and terrified by the mindset that chants that UKIP is "needed urgently" and that UKIP "will prevail".  For someone who's historically aware (and in my case, half-German) it's genuinely highly reminiscent of the posters the National Socialists used in the 1920s.  The country apparently faced catastrophic danger and only one party, and one man, could save it.

I'm not even going to make any Godwin's law type apologies when I post this image (which actually doesn't apply: it says that as an online argument between two or more parties grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.  I'm talking to myself here, not arguing with anyone :p).  If you don't know what it means, it's simply: "Our last hope: Hitler".  It encapsulates so much in one sentence.

Just to be clear, I do not for a moment think that UKIP heralds an overthrow of democracy and the advent of the 4th Reich.  It would be silly to suggest it does.  Thankfully, the parameters of European politics in 2014 are far more narrowly defined than those of Europe in the 1920s.  Almost every country is a fully functioning democracy.  Parties are generally grouped far closer to the centre than they were almost 100 years ago: the extreme far right and far left generally do not have the appeal they did back then. 

Yet there are valid comparisons to be made here in simple terms of the rhetoric.  When 47% of people ticked the "NSDAP" box in Weimar Germany they didn't know what was coming next: we only appreciate with horror the significance in retrospect.  They weren't voting for the holocaust.  They were voting amongst other things for "national revival" and German jobs.  Remember, the very mainstream Daily Mail in this country was praising the Nazis right up until 1938.  Their posters, their speeches and their policies attracted millions and seemed eminently reasonable to many.

According to some within UKIP,  the country is "smouldering beneath ready to explode".  Many feel that the traditional parties have failed us.  One party is the answer, one party can save us, one party is needed.  There's a dramatic desperation, an urgency, and there's a feeling that it's now or never.  There are clear and unfortunate parallels.  The Messianic belief that Nigel is our saviour, the only "Leader" who cares about his people, and can deliver his country, almost literally screams  "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" (One People, one Nation, one Leader).   I do wonder whether the people tweeting and re-tweeting the above are so historically unaware that this doesn't even occur to them,  if is it subliminal, or if for some it is quite deliberate.  Personally, it sends shudders down my back to see a "Leader" referred to in these terms.  No wonder people are starting to refer online to the man jokingly as Nigel Führage.

It doesn't matter that the threat to Germany in the 1920s/30s from World Jewry was as imagined as the threat is to England in 2014from Islam, "Labour fascists", gays or immigrants.  As much as I hate this government, I really don't think the country is on the precipice of economic collapse and disaster caused by immigrants, the EU, Islam or anything else.  It's rather a nice place to be in general, actually.  It could be far better still, and I hope it will become so: that won't be achieved by shutting out outsiders and becoming a nation of xenophobes. What UKIP has done is in some ways not identified a fear, so much as to create one.  There was no "Jewish problem" in Germany in 1933.  There is no "immigration crisis" in the UK in 2014.

What UKIP has achieved

By way of further historical comparison, UKIP has come from nowhere in a very short time and promises a political earthquake.  UKIP's  aim in the European elections is to send political representatives to a forum it despises and aims to destroy.  Other far right, yet more overtly racist parties in Europe promise similar.  In May 1928 the Nazis were polling just 2.8%.  By March 1933 they had used the democratic process to take power in the Reichstag, an institution that they hated, which they then destroyed from within, by passing the Enabling Act.  A 4th Reich isn't staring us in the eyes, but this should give pause for thought.

The effects of the UK leaving the EU would be enormous not just for us, but for the whole of the continent.  It would be one of the great events of early 21st century history, with no certainty whatsoever of the outcome.  UKIP has already succeeded where a generation of Tory Eurosceptics have failed, in getting the Prime Minister to put this on the political agenda.  They have done this by driving home fears about immigration and the danger it is doing, without even a single MP.  Dismiss them as "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists", Mr Cameron, but they've managed this quite impressive and worrying achievement.

What's more, instead of the Tories and Labour standing up to counter UKIP's rhetoric, they're leaving it virtually unchallenged.  Instead, they're falling over themselves trying to find ways of accommodating concerns about immigration out of fear of losing votes.  Again, quite impressive achievement there, UKIP.

What's the Solution?

It clearly isn't enough to mock Farage, UKIP and its supporters and hope they will go away*.  They won't.  It seems impossible to get through a positive message on immigration and the EU (yet we must keep trying).  Highlighting yet another story about a virulently anti-gay, anti-Islam or overtly racist UKIP supporter isn't working.  They appear daily now, Farage dismisses them as "I don't even know who this person is", they're suspended, and we move on.  It seems that it would require a UKIP supporter to suggest genocide to grab some genuine attention.  We all know the party is full of freaks, extremists, racists and idiots.  That doesn't make them go away.

Both the press and we have created this situation.  The Green Party actually has an MP, yet it never seems to secure any airtime.  Switch on the TV and Farage's grinning mug is everywhere to be seen.  He is given a disproportionate amount of airtime.  UKIP is given a disproportionate amount of attention on Twitter, by me and by plenty of others.

Our "last hope" is to get out and vote in the EU elections.  If you hate everything that UKIP stands for, and think that it reflects the basest and ugliest side of this country, these are very important elections to show that.  Analysts predict that many UKIP votes will revert to the main parties in the general elections.  However, UKIP will have a huge added claim to airtime and attention if it achieves the largest share of the vote on 22 May.  Whether you're a Tory, LibDem, Green or Labour supporter please get out there - one thing we know is that the UKIP voters will be out in force.  They're the ones who have more interest than anyone in voting in these elections.



Finally....

Look at this exchange. 

If you're not aware of the details, 40,000 political prisoners were held in the Santiago national stadium during the far-right Pinochet military coup of 1973.  Prisoners were given yellow, black or red discs.  Those with red had no chance of survival.  A total of 3000 "leftists" were murdered under the General's rule and a further 1000 disappeared without trace.

As my friend Matt Leys pointed out, it's really rather a leap to go from remarking that UKIP is homophobic, sexist and xenophobic, to thinking that Dave Jones is considering gunning them all down.

I mentioned the dramatic, emotional language of many UKIP supporters earlier.  The woman is not some random UKIP supporter.  She's a UKIP's London region MEP candidate and Southwark UKIP chair.  Do you really want her to be elected as an MEP on a package of around £115,000?  I don't.




* As fun as it clearly is



POSTSCRIPT

It's always very difficult to write a post that makes any comparison to the Third Reich, no matter how defined and limited the comparison (i.e here, to the rhetoric of some of his supporters).  The magnitude of the horrors that regime represented leave you thinking "no I'm just being a bit silly and I'm imagining all this" ...  Then you catch up on a story from Channel 4 News that reveal a letter showing concerns about Farage's fascism and racism at school and his marching through a quiet Sussex village late at night shouting Hitler Youth songs.  And you just shake your head.

Austria and the Past

Austria's one of the countries I've visited most in my life, around half a dozen times each year, and one I still find a bit of a puzzle.  It's the land of beautiful mountains, the Sound of Music [click on the link for everything you need to know about that], and Vienna.  Yet there's something I don't quite "get" about the place.   A lot of that, I think, is to do with the way Austrians relate to their past, which is what this blog post is about.

The Monument actually takes up a whole square

Last week I was in Vienna and I took the above photograph of the National Memorial to the Victims of War and Fascism.  It was inaugurated in 1988 on the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss of the country by Nazi Germany.   It's a big, prominent feature, right in the very centre of the city, behind the Opera House, at the entrance to the main shopping street.  You'd assume they chose the words quite carefully.  The plaque simply says:

"On this sport stood the Philipphof, which was destroyed during a bombing raid on 12 March 1945.  Hundreds of people who had sought refuge in the cellars of the building died as a result.

This monument is dedicated to all victims of war and fascism."

That's it.  Where to start.  Well, let's go back to some basics on Austrian history before we reach the reason why this is so jaw-droppingly unacceptable in my view.  You may have wondered why Austria, which speaks German, and is made up overwhelmingly of ethnic Germans, and shares very close cultural links to Germany, is not part of the country.  I shall endeavour to explain!

Ostarrîchi and all that jazz

The country traces its modern roots to about 996 when its name, which means "Eastern March" (a fortified area bordering the Slavic domains) was first mentioned.  It was populated by German speakers and became an independent duchy in 1156.  For over 600 years of this time it was ruled over by the Habsburg family, who were actually originally immigrants from neighbouring Switzerland.  See: this is what happens unless you have strong borders: first they come to do the underpaid jobs you don't want on hotel receptions; and next they're ruling the place, strutting around calling themselves Holy Roman Emperors and building magnificent palaces like Schönbrunn.  Vote UKIP and all that.

Austria was pretty shit at wars, losing a remarkably high percentage that it ever got involved in.  For this reason there's a HUGE monument at the Praterstern in Vienna to an utterly insignificant naval victory they won in 1866 against the Italians, in which two(!) Italians ships were sunk.  When you're rubbish at battles, you've really got to sex up the ones you won, I guess.  So, instead of fighting, Austria married off its royal children strategically and built up a great empire.  The Habsburg motto became: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (let others wage war; you, fortunate Austria, marry).






The vast, multinational empire was all fine and dandy until the political changes occasioned by the rise and defeat of Napoleon, and the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.  Austria occupied an odd position in German affairs.  The Habsburgs tended to be elected to the position of Holy Roman Emperor (ie. German Emperor) and so had a reasonably dominant influence in the territory we now call Germany.  At the same time they had a vast non-German empire, whose people would come to identify more and more with their national grouping as time went on.  Matters came to a head when the North Germans took on Austria in war, and of course won so rapidly the poor Austrians didn't even have time to get their Apfelstrudels out for breakfast.  If you've been paying attention, you'll remember: Austrians = "shit at war".

The once multinational, multilingual Austrian Parliament

Austria was pushed out of German affairs, the King of Prussia became Kaiser of a unified Germany (excluding some 8 million ethnically German Austrians), and Austria-Hungary, as it was now known, tried to hold together its dysfunctional empire of around 10 different nationalities.  On one level it was doomed to failure; on another view it was an economically booming multinational entity of 50 million people.  Its economy grew 75% from 1870 to 1913, for example, almost double the rate of Britain's, and faster even than Germany's.  Representatives from around the Empire addressed the Parliament in Vienna (above) in their own language, schools taught in their the local language, and State officials could use their own language at work.  Some would say it was heading very much in the right direction, and was a prototype for a central European Union.

Anschluss and Austrian War Criminals

World War One is of course the hot historical topic of 1914.  It all of course began when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.  If you're a Blackadder fan, you'll know the poor Ostrich died for nothing too :(  Germany had given Austria-Hungary a blank cheque offer of military support, which given just how shit Austria was at fighting wars was possibly rather silly.  

The plaque commemorating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Imperial Burial Vault in Vienna is dedicated to "the first victim of WW1".  How interesting a spin that is, from the country that actually chose to declare war and invade Serbia a month after his assassination in Sarejevo.   I also read a fascinating little Q&A in a Vienna tabloid last week on WW1.  The first thing it said was "It's clear that Emperor Franz Josef was not solely to blame for the war."  This narrative of "it wasn't us" will return... 

When Austria pulled out of the war in October 1918, with its empire collapsing round its ears, followed by the collapse of Germany shortly afterwards, the question was, what next.  Now that they were free of their foreign empire, plenty of Austrians favoured union with Germany. However, the Allies were having none of it.  A referendum in Salzburg province indicated a genuine 99.8% support for becoming part of neighbouring Bavaria.  The victorious Allies would only apply the principle of self-determination when it suited them and strengthening Germany was not on the cards in 1919.  So, Austria became a "rump republic" just 1/8th the size it had been, once again outside and independent of Germany. 

Terrified Austrians look away in horror at the Anschluss. Oh.

In March 1938 the Germans invaded.  Well... that's how many Austrians tend to characterise it.  Given crowds lined the route of the panzers towards Vienna and the only thing that was thrown at them were flowers by the ecstatic onlookers, it's hard to see it as a military invasion in the usual sense.  I'm told that during the filming of the Sound of Music, the city of Salzburg's objection to decking the streets with Nazi flags were swiftly withdrawn when they were told actual archive footage would be used instead (thanks @chrisdaleoxford!).  Just 25 years later there would have been some very prominent, identifiable, red faces to be noted in the crowd.

Let's not sugar-coat Austrian involvement in the Third Reich.  They were in it up to their ears.  From the Führer Hitler, downwards to Adolf Eichmann (the major organiser of the holocaust who attended the same school in Linz that Hitler did, 17 years later), to Franz Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), to Amon Goeth (of Schindler's List fame), and to members of the Austrian ski regiments that the Third Reich newspapers proudly proclaimed had taken part in the invasion of Norway, the Austrians were hugely enthusiastic participants in the Reich.  The uncontrolled viciousness of anti-Semitic attacks in Vienna during 1938/9 actually caused the Nazis in Berlin embarrassment: the Jews needed to be robbed and encouraged to emigrate in an orderly fashion, not be beaten up so obviously under the nose of the world media.  One shocking statistic I heard is that the Austrians made up just 7% of the Third's Reich population, yet contributed 25% of the membership of the SS, and 40% of the management at the death camps.  

In other occupied European countries, there was a mixture of collaboration and resistance.  In Austria there wasn't collaboration: there was full on leadership and participation.  Austria was an integral part of the Nazi Third Reich.  There was absolutely no armed resistance: as the historian Guy Walters put it to me recently, the museum of Austrian Resistance in Vienna is the smallest one he has ever visited.

The Real Life Amon Goeth, from Vienna, as played by Fiennes

From 1943, only when it became clear that Germany was losing the war, and food and other shortages hit hard, did the love affair at being part of the Greater German Reich began rapidly to wane in Austria.  Local party officials reported regular occurrences of dissent and anti-Piefke comments.  Piefke is a derogatory term for Germans still used by some Austrians: it's a bit stronger than the US term for northerners, "Yankee".  Let's go with "Fukcing Yankee", or similar.  Then, late in the war, came the Allied bomb raids: the centre of Salzburg was obliterated and around 30% of Vienna was destroyed.  In the end, Austria was on the losing side of yet another war (this time, fortunately, and of course!).  Finally the country was divided, like Germany into four zones of occupation.  This lasted ten years until the US, Soviet Union, Britain and France withdrew in 1955.  Austria was forever to remain a neutral country, and would never seek reunification with Germany, as part of the new Austrian State Treaty. 

So there's your long-winded answer.  Why isn't Austria part of Germany today, whilst say neighbouring Bavaria is? - a series of historical accidents.  It did not stop them, sadly, from participating fully in the worst chapter of German history imaginable.

The Myth of the First Victim

With newly re-established Austria finding its feet in 1955, many people turned firmly to the future and did not want to discuss the past.  To be fair, collective amnesia was a phase that many in Germany went through too.  The difference was that the Austrians had what they took to be official sanction for it in the words of the 1943 Allied "Moscow Declaration".  It had described Austria as "the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression".  This was a blatant untruth, and was intended to encourage resistance in the country.  It followed directly with a warning that if Austria did not do so it would pay for it when victory came.  As we know, that resistance never happened.  Right up to May 1945 young Austrian men were dying fiercely defending the Third Reich.

In West Germany, by contrast, an intensive programme of civilian de-nazification had been carried out by the Allies, which just did not occur here.  It suited many Austrians, laden with personal or family guilt, and latent resentment for the terrible fate that had befallen the country from 1938-45, to buy into this myth of the first victim.  The Sound of Music is the perfect example of the sugar-coating/ total white-washing of the period of history.  You watch it and think "oh those poor little Austrians!" forgetting entirely about the sing-song Viennese accents ordering people off trains and into gas chambers.  Worse, the movie isn't even Austrian - it's a product of Hollywood.

Oh Julie: what were you part of?

In 1991, a majority of Austrians said it was time to "put the holocaust behind them".  Just consider for a moment how many holocaust and other war victims were still alive and suffering at that point.  A poll in March 2013 that was widely reported abroad showed three of five Austrians want a "strong man" and lead the country, and 42% think things were not all bad under Hitler.  46% (in 2013!) still thought of Austria as a victim.  

I suppose it's something, though, that 54% rejects the myth.  Given these figures it would be silly, and wrong, to say "all Austrians deny the past".  They clearly do not.  As time has gone on, there has (slowly) been a more honest and critical reappraisal of the situation.  Attitudes also vary according to which part of the country you visit.  Vienna has long been traditionally more social-democrat and, I think, open to own up to the country's history.  Even in sleepy, conservative Salzburg I met a woman who was spitting mad about companies celebrating their 60th anniversaries in 2008/9, when she said it was blatantly obvious they had been "aryanised" (i.e. stolen from their former Jewish owners).  The picture is nuanced, but it's fair to say that in general Germany has been admirably open at least since the late 1960s to talking about its past, whereas Austria has been remarkably reticent on the whole.

Does the Past Matter?

Well yes, I think it does.  An honest appraisal of the past is, for me, a key component in achieving a healthy, tolerant society.   The Jewish community of Germany is absolutely flourishing once more and is the fastest growing in the world.  At 120,000 it is the 3rd largest in the EU.  Munich's Jews are back up to pre-1933 numbers.   It's nothing short of a miracle that Jews feel safe and want to bring up their children up right across the country.  I absolutely believe this in part down to the way the country has dealt so thoroughly with the history of the Nazi period.  In Austria there is a quite different feeling.  The small Jewish community is centred in one district of the capital, it is predominantly Ultra-Orthodox and was for many years completely stagnant in size.  Repeated recent stories sadly point to Viennese Jews being wary of anti-Semitic attacks. 

The far-right Freedom Party of Austria regularly polls 20-25%; in 1999 when it entered national government as part of a coalition, it attracted diplomatic sanctions from the EU.  Germany (just like Britain) isn't a bed of roses when it comes to xenophobic tendencies, but in Austria these people have been polling big numbers for decades and actually taking part in local and national government.  Its leader was recently embroiled in a scandal over an overtly anti-Semitic cartoon that he published.

Open-minded, liberal friends of mine in Vienna acted angrily to the reporting of the March 2013 poll abroad.  They said Austria was being picked on and it really was time to move on - their kids were sick of hearing all this when they had nothing to do with it.  I'd have a lot more sympathy with this if the country had actually been through the process Germany has.  You are much more inclined to forgive when something has been honestly owned up to, rather than dealt with it in a half-hearted and sometimes completely dishonest way.  This is even more the case where almost half the population still today thinks of their country as a victim rather than a perpetrator nation.  Of course my friends' kids were nothing to do with the actual crimes: but they are part of the society in 2013 that answers these polls the way it does, and that votes the Freedom Party in.

Mauthausen in Austria: the cruelest of all camps?

I remember my first visit to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz.  It is widely known as the most gratuitously cruel of all the camps across German-controlled Europe.  The SS took pleasure in devising over 60 ways of killing prisoners, from forcing them to climb down a quarry wall whilst taking pot-shots at their hands (the "Parachute Jump") to the "domino effect" of prisoners carrying heavy stones up 180 uneven steps falling back onto the people below them.  There was a special exhibition on entitled "Austrians in Mauthausen".  This presumably was set up by whatever professional historians run the exhibits here.  I was excited to see this acknowledgement of the role of Austrian SS management and guards in this Austrian camp.  But no, it was an exhibit about political opponents and the handful of priests who had ended up there.  The last section was a huge celebration of the liberation of Austria in May 1945.  Wow.  Just wow.  Austrian kids will come here to be educated on the holocaust and they will leave with the impression the Germans came in, did it all, and left.  It's actually shameful.

"That" Monument

So we return to the monument in the centre of Vienna.  In a way it draws together all the strands of this post perfectly.  It purports to commemorate all victims of war and fascism, yet it makes no reference to the Jews, to the Gypsies, to the socialists, to the communists, to the priests, or to the gays.  Of the 40 million victims of the Second World War, it in fact only mentions one group expressly: the 300 or so rich Austrian inhabitants of the luxury Philipphof apartment complex who were killed in a US air-raid.

I feel quite strongly about the wrongs of the Allied carpet bombing of German and Austrian civilian targets (please read this post if you haven't already) but this "War and Fascism" monument.. it actually makes me vaguely stabby.  I believe it is right and just to acknowledge civilian victims, even in a perpetrator nation, and even if they were members of or supporters of the Nazi party.  They did not deserve to be summarily burnt or crushed to death in a cellar in this way.  But before that HAS to come acknowledgement of the other victims, and indeed this country's role in carrying out crimes against them.  That is entirely, 100%, lacking here.  Austria really can do better than this.