Austria commemorates annexation by Nazi Germany

At a joint session of the two chambers of Austria’s Federal Parliament on the 70th anniversary of the ‘Anschluss’ – Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938 – Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said that no amount of restitution would ever make amends. "No compensation can ever diminish the wrong that the Nazis did to our Jewish fellow citizens," he said, adding: "No payoff can undo the inexcusable."

"I can only humbly beg survivors and their relatives to accept this gesture for what it is: a trifling acknowledgment of the injustice that was done to you," Gusenbauer told parliamentarians in Vienna. Barbara Prammer, speaker of the lower house of parliament, reminded lawmakers that the country shared responsibility for Nazi atrocities because of its complicity. Prammer said the notion that Austrians were somehow forced to commit crimes was a "fiction of history" that had emerged after World War II ended in 1945. "The Nazis didn't just come in from the outside," added Helmut Kritzinger, who presides over the Federal Council, the upper house of parliament.

200,000 Jews lived in Austria prior to March 1938, most of them in the capital. Within just a few days of the Anschluss, a third of them had been arrested, most destined to die. Others fled abroad. Political dissenters were also rounded up. For decades, Austria refused to accept responsibility for the fate of its Jews, and only in 2000 did the government sign an agreement to compensate Jews whose property had been confiscated or looted.

On the square where thousands had given Adolf Hitler an adoring welcome in 1938, 80,000 candles were lit at a vigil on Wednesday, one for every person who perished under the regime. The somber ‘Night of Silence’ remembrance was deliberated designed in stark contrast to the jubilation that greeted Hitler’s arrival to his native Austria in 1938.