Facebook
Twitter88 years after the "Anschluss": Commemoration ceremony at MedUni Vienna
Today, 12 March, marks the anniversary of the day on which German troops marched into Austria in 1938. The “Anschluss” of Austria to the German Reich signalled the onset of unprecedented persecution of the many people deemed by the Nazis to be their “ideological opponents”.
The 12 March 1938 marked the beginning of a development that left a lasting mark on Austria and its people. It heralded the systematic persecution of entire groups of the population – Jews, political dissidents, Roma and Sinti, Carinthian Slovenes, conscientious objectors, homosexuals, people accused of “anti-social behaviour” – to name but a few.
All areas of society were affected. Discrimination became part of everyday life. Incursions were made into the most personal aspects of people’s lives, into their marriages and families. Businesses were “aryanized”, people were forced out of their homes and banned from practicing their professions, expelled from universities and schools: entire livelihoods were destroyed. Many who were unable to flee in time were deported to concentration camps and murdered.
Today, however, is also the founding day of the University of Vienna. One of the founding members of the Alma Mater Rudolphina, established in March 1365, was the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Vienna. After the “Anschluss”, 53 percent of the teaching staff of the former faculty were dismissed or driven out from their posts for “racial” as well as political reasons. For Austrian science, this meant a huge brain drain, the consequences of which endured long after the Nazi era had ended.
It was not until 1998 that the Faculty of Medicine acknowledged its shared responsibility and commemorated the events. Since then, a memorial plaque for the persecuted faculty members has been installed in the arcades of the University of Vienna. Ten years later, the MedUni Vienna, to give it its present name, erected a memorial designed by Dvora Barzilai in front of the rectorate building on Spitalgasse in memory of the expelled university teachers and students.
Today, as every year, a commemoration ceremony was held at this “memorial against forgetting”. The musical and ceremonial programme was provided by Chief Cantor Shmuel Barzilai, followed by speeches by Rector Markus Müller and the President of the Jewish Community of Vienna, Oskar Deutsch. Afterwards, the Managing Director of the National Fund, Hannah Lessing, spoke about how the expellees were treated after 1945, the culture of remembrance and her encounters with contemporary witnesses.
In her speech, Lessing emphasised that the tragedy of the 20th century did not come out of nowhere. “Many people contributed to it. By tolerating, accepting or spreading antisemitic ideas – long before 1938. By remaining silent, even though science and research should have been voices of reason. And also through the active participation of scientists and doctors who propagated racial science and eugenics or participated in crimes themselves.”
That is why it is so important “that institutions such as the Medical University of Vienna make a conscious effort to face up to their history today – to remember the fates of the victims and the injustice that is part of our history.”