ABSTRACT
In March 1938 the National Socialist expropriation of Jewish property began in Austria. At the time the majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna. About 33,000 Jewish companies and 70,000 apartments were expropriated from Jews during the Aryanization process in Vienna. Only in October 1998 was a committee of Austrian historians assigned to research the Aryanization of Jewish estate during the NS-era as well as the property claims after 1945. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in Austria is usually viewed from the perspective of the few trials of the 1960s and 1970s, with their rare convictions of Nazi war criminals. In the discourse about the prosecution of Nazi war crimes it becomes evident that the specific social and political situation of postwar Austria strongly determined how the country has been confronting National Socialism in general. The myth of Austria as "Hitler's first victim" influenced the way the de-Nazification process was handled.
