Archival Records :

No Longer Anonymous: Vienna Gestapo Photographic Index in the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Nicht mehr Anonym: Fotos aus der Erkennungsdienstlichen Kartei der Gestapo Wien; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes - DÖW)

Title
No Longer Anonymous: Vienna Gestapo Photographic Index
in the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Nicht mehr Anonym: Fotos aus der Erkennungsdienstlichen Kartei der Gestapo Wien; Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes - DÖW)

Description
The Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes or DÖW) was created in the spring of 1963 by a group of former resistance fighters, persecuted individuals, and academics. The archive is publicly funded. Its brief is to document the resistance to National Socialism in Austria; Nazi persecution and the flight and exile of persecuted individuals from Austria; the Holocaust in Austria; and to fight against current anti-Semitism and the extreme right. Publications online include an overview of the Shoah of the Austrian Jewry which covers the Anschluss, Jews as victims of Nazi euthanasia, transports to concentration camps; flight, emigration and death. The DÖW employs a team of full-time researchers. It manages an archive, a library and several special collections. It undertakes research and publishes its findings and also organises exhibitions and runs an education programme.

In 2000, a chance find in the Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna (Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv) led to the rediscovery of the photographic index of the Vienna Gestapo. The index holds police photographs and information on 12,000 individuals arrested by the Vienna Gestapo for a variety of reasons. In 2001 the DÖW scanned the images and has published a sample of over 2,000 records on its website. The whole photographic index includes 1,500 records on Jewish citizens, 450 of which can be consulted online at the time of writing.

The records from the Vienna Gestapo Photographic Index available online contain the scanned police photographs and basic biographical details and information on the fate of the person, if known. They can be searched by name or through one of the following thematic categories: Jewish persons (Jüdinnen und Juden), Roma and Sinti (Roma und Sinti), foreign labourers (Fremdarbeiter), individuals in opposition (Individuelle Widerständigkeit), leftist movement (Arbeiterbewegung), catholic conservatives (Katholish-konservatives Lager), Roman Catholic church (Römisch-katholische Kirche)and Jehovah's Witnesses (Internationale Bibelforschervereinigung-Zeugen Jehovas).

The complete collection of scanned records can be consulted at the DÖW archives. The original photographs and index cards are kept at the Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna (Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv). Additional information on individuals can be obtained by contacting erfassung@doew.at or visiting the DÖW.

Approximately 350 records from the Vienna Gestapo Photographic Index are also included on the DÖW's bilingual (German & English) CD-ROM version of its database of Austrian Victims of the Holocaust.

Contact Information
Dr. Gerhard Ungar and Gisela Wibihail, M.A.
Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes
Altes Rathaus
Wipplingerstr. 6-8
A-1010 Wien
Tel: +43 (0)1 53436 90319
Fax: +43 (0)1 53436 9990311 (within Austria)
Fax +43(0)1 534367171(from overseas)
Email: erfassung@doew.at
http://www.doew.at/ in German and English

Source
<http://www.doew.at/>, accessed 11 March 2003