ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how knowledge of the findings of the Austrian Volksgerichte can influence the perception of the Holocaust. In many towns and villages in the eastern parts of Austria, civil society initiatives have been using court records in order to shed light on an obfuscated part of local history. In 1998, some scholars were able to publish preliminary reports of their studies in magazines; two of them appeared in an omnibus volume about postwar trials in Austria and Europe. In a series of "Mauthausen trials" between 1946 and 1949, the People's Courts of Vienna and Linz prosecuted forty-one defendants for killings in Mauthausen or one of its sub-camps; thirty out of them were found guilty and sentenced. In the Austrian jury trials, a jury of eight members decides upon the guilt of the defendant as in common law systems.
