Teaching the Holocaust in Vienna: A Report

Teaching the Holocaust at Vienna in connection with a course of lectures on the Weltanschauungen of the Viennese Fin de Siécle turned out to be an experience that made vivid the phenomenon of Antisemitism. Gertraud Diem-Wille employed techniques of psychodrama to elicit responses of the members of a seminar at the University of Vienna who were victims, and children and grandchildren of victims of the Nazis, as well as children and grandchildren of Nazis. The complexity of attitudes and feelings presented contrasted with the simplicity of theories designed to explain antisemitism.