Archives - EVA HOLPFER M.A.

"It is very difficult to make clear the responsibility of Austrian collaborators of Nazi-German offices in occupied Italy, who were involved in the persecution and deportation of the Jews living in Italy. Although the number of Austrian participants is probably much higher than assumed according to the results of present research, there is only one case verified, in which an Austrian citizen has been accused in Austria of his participation in the persecution of the Italian Jews. The presumed chief responsible, Gottfried Meir, was accused in 1954 in Austria by the so-called People's Court at Graz, external division Klagenfurt, but he was acquitted for lack of evidence. Despite a prison sentence for life pronounced in his absence by the Military Court at Turin in 1955, he was never extradited to Italy by the Austrian state. Two attempts to retry the case against Meir in the 1960s failed due to lack of evidence. This particular case, from the acquittal of the accused to the two vain retrials, illustrates very well the tendency of the development in the prosecution of Nazi crimes, that has been dominating in Austria since the end of the 1940s: The re-intergration of the former members of the NSDAP and the exculpation of the perpetrators."

Links to the German abstracts about the atrocities in Burgenland:

Das Massaker an ungarisch-jüdischen Zwangsarbeitern zu Kriegsende in Deutsch-Schützen (Burgenland) und seine gerichtliche Ahndung durch die österreichische Volksgerichtsbarkeit

Das Massaker an ungarisch-jüdischen Zwangsarbeitern zu Kriegsende in Rechnitz (Burgenland) und seine gerichtliche Ahndung durch die österreichische Volksgerichtsbarkeit

 
  top