With the creation of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, the City of Vienna will become a leading location for historical research on the Shoa. The institute named after Simon Wiesenthal, who passed away in 2003 and would have been one hundred years old this year, will serve as a research institute for visiting scholars and as a showcase for themed exhibitions. It will house Holocaust-relevant records of the Jewish Community Vienna, together with the documentation collected by Simon Wiesenthal. The archives will be made accessible for researchers and the interested public. The establishment of the Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna is one of several priorities of the new Austrian government in the field of Holocaust remembrance and restitution included in the program issued by the new government on December 2, 2008.

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Wolfgang Renezeder

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Embassy of Austria