February 01 , 2006
A new international Holocaust research centre is to be set up in Vienna bearing the name of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who died last year. Initiators of the "Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies" (VWI) presented the project at Vienna University. VWI chairperson Anton Pelinka said the institute would be "a worthy framework for the archives and heritage of Simon Wiesenthal." Pelinka said that Austria would "put itself on the map of international Holocaust research". The new institute would keep closely to Wiesenthal's mandate in researching and documentation questions of anti-Semitism, racism and the Holocaust. At the centre of the institute would be Wiesenthal's own collection of about 8 000 documents, with written records of his decades-long quest for justice for Nazi crimes. A further central part would be the archives of the Jewish Community in Vienna. The Jewish Community had supported about 14 000 Nazi victims in applications for restitution. To make this possible, historical archives scattered in wartime and post-war years had been reconstructed. The new institute would be strongly orientated to the public, with lectures, exhibitions and readings. It would be housed in a central Viennese location supplied by the Jewish Community. The City of Vienna had signaled willingness for financial support if the Austrian state also contributed. Jewish Community spokesperson Ingo Zechner said the institute should go into full operation by 2010.
