Newsletter December 2025
Dear friends and supporters,
Please find below our latest newsletter with news and updates from the National Fund and the Cemeteries Fund.
🖼️Exhibition opening and book presentation in Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv and London
Photo: National Fund
Our travelling exhibition “From Repression to Remembrance” is coming to Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv and London!
A special cultural event is coming soon to Buenos Aires: on 11 December 2025, our exhibition will open in cooperation with the Austrian Embassy at the Museo del Holocausto in Buenos Aires. The opening ceremony will begin with speeches by the Austrian Ambassador to Argentina and a representative from the museum. This will be followed by a programme highlight in the form of a panel discussion: a Holocaust survivor who was interviewed for the “Lost Neighbourhood” project will meet with a third-generation Holocaust survivor. The exhibition will also feature a small table in the centre of the room displaying personal items and letters from two surviving Austrian families and serving as touching testimonies of survival.
On 16 December 2025, the bilingual exhibition will open at the Austrian Club in Tel Aviv. In partnership with the Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv and the Central Committee of Austrian Jews in Israel, the exhibition will open on the premises of the Austrian Club at Ester haMalka 7, Tel Aviv. The programme will include a panel discussion that will give voice to three generations and feature National Fund Managing Director Hannah Lessing and historian and professor of contemporary history Albert Lichtblau, among others. The interviews Lichtblau conducted with Holocaust survivors in Israel formed the basis for Volume 8 of the book series Erinnerungen (“Lives Remembered”) which has a thematic focus on “Flight to Palestine/Life in Israel,” and will also be presented during the exhibition opening.
On 21 January 2026, the exhibition will open in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum in London. Details to follow.
🥇Simon Wiesenthal Prize 2025 - call for entries still open
Photo: © Erich Lessing/Lessingimages Vienna
The call for entries for the Simon Wiesenthal Prize 2025 is now open. The award, endowed with a total of 30,000 euros, will be presented to up to three individuals or groups for their civic engagement to combat antisemitism and educate the public about the Holocaust. Prize candidates’ activities should be geared towards to sharing knowledge about the Holocaust, thus strengthening social understanding of its mechanisms and consequences, and increasing awareness of the dangers of antisemitism.
Entries and nominations can be submitted in German and English using the online application form on the Simon Wiesenthal Prize website. The Simon Wiesenthal Prize is awarded in two categories: Civic engagement to combat antisemitism (7,500 euros) and Civic engagement to educate the public about the Holocaust (7,500 euros). In addition, there is a Main Prize of 15,000 euros.
🤝Project funding
On 11 November 2025, the Board of Trustees of the National Fund approved a total of 50 project applications for project funding, granting around 313,000 euros in total.
Due to the large number of applications – more than twice as many as in the previous year – the submission deadline in November 2025 has been cancelled. The current submission deadline for project funding applications is 1 February 2026.
The focus on funding projects that identify and combat disinformation in online media will continue in the coming year. Priority will be given to projects that seek to counteract disinformation relativising the Holocaust or undermining the culture of remembrance. A third of the total project funding budget is earmarked for this purpose in 2026.
To date, the National Fund has funded a total of over 3,200 projects and programmes to the tune of around 41 million euros. An overview of all projects and programmes funded by the National Fund can be found in our project database.
🏆🏆Ceremony in Parliament pays tribute to 30 years of the National Fund
Photo: Parliamentary Administration/Johannes Zinner
Thirty years ago, on 27 April 1995, the Federal Law on the National Fund came into force on the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the Republic. With a ceremony in Parliament on 10 November 2025, the National Fund looked back on three decades of active responsibility towards the victims of National Socialism at the place where it was founded. Alongside a comprehensive review of its achievements, the event focused on the current and future tasks of the National Fund.
Second President of the National Council Peter Haubner emphasised that the suffering inflicted by the Nazis must never be forgotten or trivialised. Through a variety of projects, the National Fund has helped achieve greater recognition of the injustices suffered and preserved the memory across generations.
Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen praised the National Fund's “active responsibility” and its role as a “builder of bridges” between survivors, their descendants and Austria. Remembrance, said Van der Bellen, also means recognition – and remains a process without end.
Former National Council President Andreas Khol and former Federal Chancellor Franz Vranitzky spoke with National Fund Managing Director Hannah Lessing about the creation of the fund and the significance of that step – a conversation about responsibility, change and the power of remembrance.
Another highlight of the ceremony were the moving readings by Sarah Gärtner-Horvath and Yuval Yaary, both third-generation survivors, from the memoirs of their ancestors.
A report with a picture gallery and video of the ceremony can be found here.
📖New publication marking the 30th anniversary of the National Fund
The publication “30 Years of the National Fund” was released to accompany the ceremony on 10 November 2025.
It pays tribute to the National Fund on its 30th anniversary and begins with forewords by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, Second President of the National Council Peter Haubner and Managing Directors Hannah M. Lessing and Judith Pfeffer. In the introduction, Hannah Lessing addresses the transition “From repression to remembrance”, followed by words from former chairpersons of the Board of Trustees such as Heinz Fischer, Doris Bures and Wolfgang Sobotka.
The publication highlights the changing tasks of the National Fund: from victim recognition and symbolic payments to the recording and preservation of 40,000 fates, the documentation of life stories and the question of the National Fund without living witnesses. It also covers key tasks such as project funding, the implementation of the 2001 Washington Agreement, compensation and in rem restitution by the General Settlement Fund, the restoration of the Jewish cemeteries, the Austrian exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial, as well as the fostering and sharing of knowledge about the Holocaust.
Guest contributions were provided by committee members Susanne Janistyn-Novák, Ferdinand Trauttmansdorff, Brigitte Bailer, Otto Hochreiter, Gerald Lamprecht and Ljiljana Radonić, the long-standing Scientific Director of the National Fund Renate Meissner, the European Commission’s Antisemitism Coordinator Katharina von Schnurbein, Chief Rabbi Jaron Engelmayer, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Piotr Cywinski and the initiator of the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial and Holocaust survivor Kurt Yakov Tutter.
Finally, Judith Pfeffer looks ahead to the future of remembrance and the National Fund’s new responsibilities. The appendix provides additional information such as a timeline, figures, data, facts and an overview of the bodies and committees.
The publication “30 Years of the National Fund” can be ordered free of charge from the National Fund (postage costs apply) or picked up in person.
📚 The National Fund at important trade fairs in November 2025
Photos: National Fund
The National Fund took part in two important trade fairs this November and was delighted to welcome numerous visitors to its stands. The first fair, Buch Wien, took place from 12 to 16 November 2025 at Messe Wien (Hall D, Stand E17). We presented our current publications there, including the new Volume 8, Flucht nach Palästina/Leben in Israel (“Flight to Palestine/Life in Israel”), from the book series Erinnerungen. Lebensgeschichten von Opfern des Nationalsozialismus (“Lives Remembered: Life Stories of Victims of National Socialism”). The National Fund then also took part in the Interpädagogica trade fair (Hall C, Stand C0709) until Saturday, 22 November 2025, where visitors also had the opportunity to browse through our publications and learn about our current teaching materials. We would like to express our sincere thanks for the great interest and stimulating discussions at both fairs!
Information and ordering options for our publications can be found here.
🎒Study trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau
Photo: © Wolfgang Lackner
How do you prepare a school class for a visit to the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp? How can the atrocities committed there be effectively conveyed in the classroom and on site? What makes this site of the greatest crime against humanity, its significance and dimensions, relevant for young people today? These and many other questions were explored by a group of committed educators at the beginning of October 2025 during a study trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial organised by the National Fund and ERINNERN:AT in cooperation with the University of Education Vienna.
During the four-day study trip, the educators got to know the memorial site and the new Austrian national exhibition and discussed the challenges of visiting with schoolchildren as well as concepts and learning materials for preparing and following up on a visit to the memorial and exhibition.
Workshops and guided tours of the Auschwitz State Museum gave them the opportunity to learn more about Holocaust education and memorial site pedagogy and to reflect on the educational programmes available there. One of the aims of the study trip was to encourage teachers to offer excursions to concentration camp memorials with their schools and to prepare and follow up on these in a meaningful way.
🙏 We were delighted to receive so many positive responses from the participants!
Mehr zur Studienfahrt nach Auschwitz 2025 finden Sie hier.
🥇High honour for Ambassador Erich Kussbach
Photo: © National Fund/Michael Rausch-Schott
On Friday, 5 December 2025, Erich Kussbach, retired ambassador and long-standing member of the Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution, will be presented with the Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the Province of Vienna in the Coat of Arms Hall at the Vienna Town Hall.
When Austria undertook in 2001 to resolve outstanding issues of compensation and restitution of property confiscated during the Nazi era, one of the measures taken was to establish an independent three-member “Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution” to examine applications for the return of seized property in public ownership. Ambassador Erich Kussbach was the Member of the Arbitration Panel nominated by Austria.
Erich Kussbach can look back on an eventful family history. His father, Dr. Franz Kussbach, was a lawyer in Hungary during the interwar period. During the Nazi occupation of Hungary, he helped many Jewish colleagues and friends to flee and was deported to Dachau concentration camp in 1944 by the Gestapo. It was sheer luck that he escaped being murdered on a death march.
Erich Kussbach himself escaped the Soviet occupiers in spectacular fashion during the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Posing as a member of a team of Red Cross aid workers, he was able to flee by rescue plane. It was only later that he realised that the flight had not only taken him out of the danger zone, but also across the border to Austria. He was thus one of the first refugees to arrive from Hungary in 1956.
In 1963, Kussbach entered the Austrian diplomatic service, most recently serving as ambassador to Hungary and, until 1996, as permanent representative to the International Danube Commission. He was an honorary professor of humanitarian international law at the University of Linz and professor of international law at the Catholic Pázmány Péter University in Budapest.
You can find out more about the stories from Erich Kussbach’s eventful life in an interview he gave to Arbitration Panel staff in Laxenburg in 2022:
Interview with Ambassador Erich Kussbach.
We wish you a festive December and remain
with best regards,
Your team at the National Fund