There are only a few days left before Austria is due to imprison the journalist Stephan Templ despite a total absence of grounds in what has become the most outrageous example of persecution by a European government with undeniable overtones of official anti-Semitism. This announcement was placed in the newspaper Der Standard crying out against the injustice.
Category: Letters
75 Historians Worldwide Send Letter and Petition Protesting Stephan Templ’s Imminent Incarceration
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies organised a petition signed by 75 eminent Holocaust historians calling on Austria to grant clemency to Stephan Templ.
The full text of letter and all signatories below.
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
September 21, 2015
His Excellency Hans Peter Manz
Embassy of Austria
3524 International Ct. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
Dear Ambassador Manz,
As scholars who have written or taught about the Holocaust or other genocides, we are deeply troubled by the impending imprisonment of an Austrian Jewish historian and journalist who exposed Austria’s failure to return Jewish property seized during the Nazi era.
The crime of which Mr. Templ has been convicted, and sentenced to one year in prison, was his omission of the name of an estranged relative from his application for the return of his family’s seized property. This matter could have been resolved by the Templ family in civil court. The Austrian government’s decision to intervene by prosecuting and jailing Mr. Templ will be seen as an extreme overreaction to Mr. Templ’s important book, Our Vienna: Aryanization Austrian-Style, which criticized Austria’s policy concerning the restitution of Jewish property.
Please convey to President Heinz Fischer our urgent request that he reconsider his rejection of Mr. Templ’s appeal against his prison sentence.
Cordially,
Prof. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Gautam Buddha University – India
Prof. Irving Abella, York University – Canada
Prof. Karyn Ball, University of Alberta – Canada
Prof. Paul R. Bartrop, Director, Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Florida Gulf Coast University
Prof. Michael Berenbaum, American Jewish University
Prof. Alan L. Berger , Director, Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz, Florida Atlantic University
Prof. Aaron Berman, Hampshire College
Prof. Paul Bookbinder, University of Massachusetts Boston
Prof. Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Rabbi Shalom Bronstein, Jerusalem, Israel
Prof. Frank Chalk, Director, The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia University
Prof. Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida, Universidad Complutense – Madrid, Spain
Eric Cohen, Chairperson, Investors Against Genocide
Prof. Debórah Dwork, Director, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University
Dr. Helen Fein, Board Chair, Institute for the Study of Genocide
Dr. Edyta Gawron, Jagiellonian University – Krakow, Poland
Prof. Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College (emer.); Editor, Shofar
Prof. Jay Geller, Vanderbilt University
Prof. Henry Gonshak, Montana Tech
Dr. Elvira Groezinger, University of Potsdam (emer.)
Dr. Alex Grobman, America-Israel Friendship League
Prof. Kathryn Hellerstein, University of Pennsylvania
Prof. John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta – Canada (emer.)
Dr. Charles Jacobs, Americans for Peace and Tolerance
Roz Jacobs, Artistic Director, The Memory Project Productions
Prof. Steven L. Jacobs, University of Alabama
Prof. Katherina von Kellenbach, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Prof. Yitzchak Kerem, Hebrew University; Editor, Sefarad vehaMizrah
Hon. David Kilgour, J.D., Ottawa, Canada
Prof. Gerd Korman, Cornell University (emer.)
Prof. Arnold Krammer, Texas A & M University
Prof. Claudia Koonz, Duke University (emer.)
Dr. Neil Kressel, Director, Honors Program in the Social Sciences, William Paterson University
Prof. Laurel Leff, Northeastern University
Prof. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Emory University
Prof. Marcia Sachs Littell, Stockton University (emer.)
Prof. Shulamit Magnus, Oberlin College
Dr. Rafael Medoff, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Prof. Robert Melson, Purdue University (emer.)
Prof. Rochelle L. Millen, Wittenberg University (emer.)
Prof. Stephen H. Norwood, University of Oklahoma
Prof. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath, The University of Texas at Dallas
Prof. David Patterson, The University of Texas at Dallas
Prof. Paolo Pezzino, University of Pisa, Italy
Prof. Eunice G. Pollack, University of North Texas
Prof. Antony Polonsky (emer.), Brandeis University
Prof. Moishe Postone , The University of Chicago , Co-Director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory
Prof. Walter Reich, George Washington University, Former executive director, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Prof. Peter Rose, Smith College (emer.)
Prof. Thane Rosenbaum, New York University
Prof. John K. Roth, Claremont McKenna College (emer.)
Prof. Sheldon Rubenfeld, President, Center for Medicine After the Holocaust
Eli Rubenstein, National Director, March of the Living – Canada
The Rev. Prof. Martin Rumscheldt, Atlantic School of Theology – Halifax, NS Canada
Prof. Suzanne Rutland, University of Sydney – Australia (emer.)
Prof. Victoria Sanford, Lehman College
Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Prof. Baila R. Shargel, Manhattanville College
Prof. Robert Skloot
University of Wisconsin-Madison (emer.)
Prof. Philip Spencer, Kingston University – London, England (emer.)
Prof. Leon Stein, Roosevelt University (emer.)
Prof. Oren Baruch Stier, Director, Holocaust Studies Initiative – Florida International University
Prof. Norton S. Taichman, University of Pennsylvania (emer.)
Prof. Gil Troy, McGill University
Prof. Kenneth Waltzer, Michigan State University
Prof. Chaim I. Waxman, Rutgers University (emer.)
Dr. Racelle Weiman, Director, The Humanization Project
Dr. Ann Weiss, Director, Eyes from the Ashes Foundation
Prof. Paul Weindling, Oxford Brookes University – Oxford, England (emer.)
Prof. Sonja Schoepf Wentling, Concordia University
Prof. Linda M. Woolf, Webster Universtiy
Prof. David S. Wyman, University of Massachusetts – Amherst (emer.)
Prof. Randall C. Zachman, University of Notre Dame
Prof. John C. Zimmerman, University of Nevada Las Vegas
Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker, Bar-Ilan University
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center – Israel Office & Eastern European Affairs
Prof. Ronald W. Zweig, New York University
(Institutions listed for identification purposes only.)
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ABOUT THE WYMAN INSTITUTE: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, located in Washington, D.C., is a research and education institute focusing on America’s response to the Holocaust. It is named in honor of the eminent historian and author of the 1984 best-seller The Abandonment of the Jews, the most important and influential book concerning the U.S. response to the Nazi genocide.
The Institute’s Advisory Committee includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, Members of Congress, and other luminaries.
The Institute’s Academic Council includes more than fifty leading professors of the Holocaust, American history, and Jewish history.
The Institute’s Arts & Letters Council, chaired by Cynthia Ozick, includes prominent artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers.
(A complete list is available upon request.)
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Response to Attorney General’s Rejection of Stephan Templ’s Appeal
Following the Attorney General’s summary rejection of Stephan’s appeal, we sent a response to which no reply has yet been forthcoming. We raised therein both new and crucial facts which according to the Attorney General would provoke a re-opening of the case.
An Open Letter to the Austrian Attorney General
This open letter to the Attorney General of Austria Dr Werner Pleischl raises a number of the multiple factual and legal errors in the prosecution of Mr Templ, and highlights the fundamental injustice of the conduct by the Austrian authorities. The full text of the letter follows – a PDF version of the document can be downloaded here.
Continue reading An Open Letter to the Austrian Attorney General