ABSTRACT
Dealing with the Holocaust—in German, the Umgang with it—has proven itself to be a repeatedly contentious issue in public life and historiography throughout the Western world. In America, they are usually spared the “schon wieder” that Rolf Steininger encountered when requesting support for a lecture series in Innsbruck in 1992-1993 on the Umgang mit dem Holocaust. The host for the lecture series, Austria, emerges clearly as the country the least successful in dealing with the Holocaust and in fact the most recalcitrantly anti-Semitic. Ultimate reconciliation will come from the children of Germany, Austria, Israel, and other lands. Austria could fend off Soviet claims, please ex-Nazis who formed an important voting bloc, and save a lot of money to boot. The Moscow Declaration of 1943, in which the Allies declared Austria to be Germany’s first victim, combined after 1945 with the developing Cold War to make the United States and other Western powers cleanly separate Austria from Germany.
