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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Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician whose name became synonymous with a specific form of autism, is a figure both celebrated and condemned. His work in the 1940s led to the identification of what would later be called Asperger syndrome, a condition marked by difficulties in social interaction, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors, often accompanied by…
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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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While the title refers to this period as a prelude, the Holocaust was already underway by 1933. However, the Action T4 program marked the beginning of systematic mass murder. The T4 Euthanasia Program, also known as Aktion T4, represents one of the most chilling manifestations of Nazi ideology and is often considered a precursor to…
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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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Mauthausen was one of the most prominent and most notorious Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Located near the town of Mauthausen in Upper Austria, it was established shortly after Germany annexed Austria in 1938. The camp, originally intended for political prisoners and those considered enemies of the Nazi regime, eventually held a wide…
