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Memorial in Vienna Reopened

27.05.2011

On 26 May 2011, Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer unveiled a newly renovated memorial room in the heart of Vienna.

It is on the location of the main office of the Gestapoleitstelle Wien, which had been situated in a former hotel confiscated by the Nazi regime from its Jewish owners. A new exhibit was added by the Archive of Austrian Resistance. It deals with the cruel activities of the Gestapo in Vienna, names the perpetrators - most of them Austrian-born - and those who assisted the Gestapo in persecuting resistance fighters. The Gestapo not only persecuted the Austrian resistance and everyone not in conformity with their ideology, but also played an central role in the deportation of the Viennese Jews and in the looting of their property, which was later auctioned off to "Volksgenossen."

Federal President Heinz Fischer addressed the fate of the thousands of people who were kept and tortured on the site, which for many of them became the starting point for a long period of suffering and, in some cases, death. Among those attending this event were former resistance fighters, children of those persecuted during the war, and survivors of concentration camps.