The ACFDC and the Austrian Embassy were proud to present the newest publication of Elizabeth Anthony, historian and director of Visiting Scholar Programs at the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust (2021)”.
A short introduction to the book by the author herself was followed by a discussion between her and Prof. Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Center for Israel Studies at American University. The Austrian Ambassador to the United States, H.E. Martin Weiss, gave welcoming words.
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This event was held in a combined live and virtual format. The panelists were on the stage at the Embassy, with a small in-person audience in the room. The presentation and talk was live-streamed via Zoom Webinar for everyone joining from home.
Registrations for the live audience were limited to 40 people and reserved for fully vaccinated people only. Proof of vaccination was required and checked at the entrance.
When: Tuesday, June 22, 2021 | 6:00 pm
Where: Embassy of Austria | Zoom Webinar
Ticket: Free admission for live and virtual audience, registration obligatory,
for live audience proof of vaccination is required
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Compromise of Return: Viennese Jews after the Holocaust explores the motivations and expectations that inspired Viennese Jews to reestablish lives in their hometown after the devastation and trauma of the Holocaust. Elizabeth Anthony investigates their personal, political, and professional endeavors, revealing the contours of their experiences of returning to a post-Nazi society, with full awareness that most of their fellow Austrians had embraced the Nazi takeover and their country’s unification with Germany—clinging to a collective national identity myth as "first victim" of the Nazis. Anthony weaves together archival documentation with oral histories, interviews, memoirs, and personal correspondence to craft a multilayered, multi-voiced narrative of return focused on the immediate postwar years.
The Compromise of Return is the first such social history to depict how survivors—individually and collectively—navigated postwar Vienna’s political and social setting.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
ELIZABETH ANTHONY
Photo © USHMM
Elizabeth Anthony joined the Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013 as the International Tracing Service (ITS) staff scholar and, since 2019, serves as the director of its Visiting Scholar Programs, which support significant research and writing about the Holocaust and related topics with a particular goal of ensuring the development of a new generation of scholars.
Her research focuses on the postwar Jewish community of Vienna and the records of the International Tracing Service archive. She first worked at the Museum from 1998–2004. From 2005–2007, she was a case worker and case work manager for HIAS in Vienna, Austria. She held a Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Fellowship at the Mandel Center and a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Austria and received her PhD in history from Clark University, Massachusetts in 2016.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions voiced by Elizabeth Anthony are hers and do not reflect those of the USHMM.
MICHAEL BRENNER
Photo © Stephan Rumpf
Michael Brenner is the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies and director of the Center for Israel Studies at American University, as well as the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and has held numerous teaching positions at national and international universities. He is the president of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture (Jerusalem-New York-London) and an elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Italy and the American Academy for Jewish Research. He chairs the Academic Advisory Board of the Franz Rosenzweig Center at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and is a member of several academic boards in Israel, the US, and Europe. In 2014 he was awarded the order of merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He has published several books about the history of Israel and Jews, many of which have been translated into over 10 languages.