4/16 – “Wheels and Cogs”: Why Viennese Policemen Deported Jews and Roma During the Holocaust
The police treatment of racial and religious minorities has long been a pressing question in European history, just as it is in U.S. history. Since the 1990s, historians of Nazism have tried to ascertain why seemingly “normal” policemen served on execution squads that wiped out Jewish communities in eastern Europe during the Holocaust. Hypotheses have ranged from the existence of deep-seated anti-Semitism to obedience to authority to ideological indoctrination from lower-ranking officers in the security services. This presentation examines a different type of a case in a different cultural and political environment: the deportation of Jews and Roma (“Gypsies”) from Vienna, Austria, a city as wracked by labor conflicts and as beset by an ethnic pecking order as New York or Chicago after World War One. These deportations occurred in 1941-1943, when Austria was part of Nazi Germany (1938-45). Police were directly involved in guarding the trains that sent tens of thousands of people to concentration and death camps, part of the Nazi plan to rid Europe of supposedly “inferior” and “parasitic” social groups. Prof. Lewis will use data from police personnel files to explain who the policemen were and how the changing institution of the police, as well as the changing nature of Vienna under different political systems, contributed to their compliance.
A talk and discussion with Mark Lewis (professor at GC and CSI)
Moderated by Eric Ivison (professor at GC and CSI)
Register here
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