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PARTISAN REVIEW
been declared the first of Hitler's victims, Austrians did not have to own
up to their Nazi past. And, as Jorg Haider's recent electoral victory
proves, nearly a third of the population still (at least in their heart of
hearts) seems sympathetic to a neo-Nazi ideology in its disdain for all
foreigners.
Austrians have begun to grapple only recently, and haphazardly, with
the issues their German counterparts have been considering for a long
time.
Uberleben der Shoah und danach (Surviving the Shoah and After
[1999])
is one of a number of collections of essays on the subject, this
one of talks delivered at a
1997
international conference of historians,
psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and social psychologists. They focused
on post-traumatic stress disorders and the resulting individual and
social problems these have caused. As we know, in America, Germany,
and elsewhere, for years groups of therapists of diverse orientations
have had meetings with members of the social sciences, and have par–
ticipated in long-term study groups .
In Contemporary Jewish Writing in
Austria: An Anthology
(1999),
Dagmar
C.
G. Lorenz collected short
pieces, mostly by writers who were known beyond the Austrian borders
but had not reached much of a public in their native land.
The recent turmoil caused by the Vienna Philharmonic's perfor–
mance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the former Nazi death camp
in Ma utha usen-where around
I I 5,000
persons perished-exemplifies
the conflict. Only now was it openly recalled that on the day of the
Anschluss the orchestra immediately fired its Jewish members, that
they performed Beethoven's
Fidelio
ten days later at the behest of
Goering, and that
50
percent of the musicians eventually joined the
Nazi party. "Anything that changes this unique slaughterhouse on Aus–
trian soil into a concert house is tasteless to say the least... [And] the
notion of Philharmonic musicians in striped pants sitting in the quarry
where so many died is grotesque," said Marta Halpert, director of the
Centra l European office of the Anti-Defamation League. Clemens
Hellsberg, the Philharmonic's president, however, defended this concert
as a sign of hope for a new millennium. And Sir Simon Rattle, the con–
ductor, countered that "when the alternative is silence, there isn't really
an alternative for a musician." According to
The New York Times,
and
other reports, many important people stayed away, and the perfor–
mance, which was broadcast around the country and attracted
II,OOO
listeners- who had been asked not to applaud-ended in an "eloquent
silence ." Whether or not in the future Mauthausen will be remembered
for its atrocities or as a concert site remains to be seen .
