Austria
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When you look at the picture above, you may just admire the men participating in physical exercise. You may even want to join them. But the picture is of concentration camp Mauthausen. The Mauthausen main camp operated from the time of the Anschluss, when Austria was united with Nazi Germany on 8 August 1938, to…
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Ella Lingens’ life serves as a powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity for moral courage in the face of unimaginable evil. Born in Vienna in 1908, Lingens was a physician, a resistance fighter, and a Holocaust survivor who risked her life to save Jews during the Nazi regime. Her…
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On July 26, 1897, in the Austrian village of Wattens, Jakob Gapp was born into a modest working-class family. He grew up like many boys in Tyrol: ordinary, hardworking, with no hint of the extraordinary courage that would one day define him. Yet his life would unfold in ways that would test the limits of…
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No matter how you twist or turn it, when you are complicit to a crime, you are just as guilty as the perpetrator, and perhaps even more guilty because you were an enabler of that crime. Hermann Stieve was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy from 1935 to 1952, which was from the early…
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Before I go into the main story, I just want to point out the most disturbing aspect of the picture above. At the very front is a lady carrying a baby. We know now what her fate would have been. It is a disturbing sight on an old photograph, so just imagine how disturbing this…
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-The question “Would You Go Back to 1889 and kill baby Hitler?” was once posed by The New York Times Magazine. 42 % of the people answered “Yes”. Jeb Bush, younger brother of former US President George W. Bush, answered this question with “Hell yeah, I would, You gotta step up, man” I do believe…
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Historians usually focus on 1930s Germany when analyzing National Socialism, but I believe pre-WWII Austria has just as much to teach us. In fact, studying Austria’s political environment during that era offers a fascinating lens for understanding modern politics. Between 1933 and 1939, Austria experienced a rapid shift from a fragile parliamentary democracy to an…
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A member of Adolf Hitler’s extended family was among the victims of the Nazi regime’s campaign to exterminate the mentally ill, according to two historians. The woman, identified as “Aloisia V.”, was a great-grandchild of Hitler’s great-aunt, making her his second cousin once removed. She was related to him through the Schicklgruber side of his…
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Josefine Glück’s life began in the vibrant culture of 1872 Vienna, but it would end in the cold deprivation of a concentration camp. Born to Jewish parents with Hungarian roots. Orphaned at the age of fourteen, she later pursued a career as an actress and remained unmarried throughout her life. Her son, Hermann Philippus Glück,…
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On 5 May 1945, Mauthausen Concentration Camp was liberated by the US Army. Just a simple poem to commemorate that day. In Mauthausen’s shadow, where darkness did dwell,In the heart of despair, where horrors did swell,There came a day of courage, a day of light,When the chains of oppression were shattered in flight. From the…
