Austrian memorials on police operation in Museum Peršmanhof irritated

The documentation archive of the Austrian Resistance (DÖW), the Mauthausen (MM) concentration camp memorial and the Mauthausen Committee Austria (MKÖ) look after memorials of National Socialist mass crimes and carry out placement formats at memorial formats. Against this background, you have followed the news of a police operation at the Peršmanhof memorial with great concern and do not consider it appropriate for many reasons. First of all, the team of the Museum Peršmanhof applies the full solidarity of Döw, MKÖ and MM. The colleagues have been doing great and important educational work on the National Socialist crimes at the Peršmanhof for decades. The memorial can look back on years and decades of experience in the field of memory work and historical-political education. Exhibition, international commemorative celebrations, visits to students are carried out at a high level and often against revisionist resistance and accompanied professionally. The camp of the Slovenian student camp in Vienna was held for the second time in coordination with the operators of the museum at Peršmanhof and only awarded the Ernst Kirchweger Prize for Antifascist Youth Education work of the concentration camp association in April.

Such a massive police operation for apparently little occasion at a Nazi memorial is a precendence. The scope – the use of 30 civil servants and a police helicopter – raises doubts about whether the principle of proportionality was observed. These doubts are not smaller due to the rumbles (violations of the nature conservation and camping law as well as immoraling with the memorial). Therefore, DÖW, MKÖ and MM call for a complete clarification of the procedure.

“We work together in many areas in good coordination with the BMI and the executive,” says Barbara Glück, director of the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial. “For us it is central to continue working together on such a basis of trust. In this case, I am deeply irritated by the police’s rumored approach.” Andreas Krane Bitter, scientific director of the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance, says: “Memorials are highly sensitive places. In order to meet our mediation claims, we have to be able to work in peace, our visitors have to feel safe. Police missions have lost nothing, unless it is about protecting the facility and their visitors.” Will Mernyi, Chairman of Mauthausen Committee, says: “Austria gave a sad picture this weekend: On Saturday, the identities and their neo-Nazi friends were drawn through the downtown Vienna, on Sunday an anti-fascist memorial was disturbed by the police. Our years of efforts to explain and commemorate our many years of effort.”

This explanation of the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance, Mauthausen and Mauthausen Committee in Austria is supported by KZ Association (Federal Association), Mauthausen Committee Kärnten/Koroška & Wiener Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI).