"The Austrian trauma of 1938 never ended. It simply continued into the post-World War II period and continues to this very day. The majority of Viennese have relegated their past to old photo albums and memories, but for èmigrès like Richard Winter, this past was and is still very much alive." From the foreword by Gregory Weeks

After more than half a century, the Anschluss-the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany-still resonates in Vienna. On March 12, 1938, the Austrian capitol welcomed Hitler's Nazis with open arms. The effects were immediate. The city's 180,000-plus Jews-10 percent of the city's population-soon either escaped or were put in concentration camps….

In his powerful new book, Vienna's Conscience: Close-Ups and Conversations after Hitler, the late Richard Winter, a Viennese Jew who narrowly escaped to America in 1938 but never lost his love for Vienna, illuminates the complexity of modern Viennese attitudes toward the Nazi era. Winter, with assistance from wife and award-winning writer Susan Winter Balk, presents rare conversations and images that depict a psychological dynamic expressly influenced by Hitler's actions and a population's inaction. The book's close-ups of a large cross-section of Viennese citizens reveal Winter prodding his subjects to come to grips with their collective past. Their responses range from unflinching acknowledgment of Viennese complicity in Nazi crimes to defenses and denials-and all are captured in insightful interviews and striking portraits. Vienna's Conscience includes a contextually pertinent foreword by historian Gregory Weeks of Webster University in Vienna. Weeks effectively sets Winter's 1988 impressions in the context of the 70th anniversary of the Anschluss on March 12, 2008 and the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht on November 9, 2008.

Susan Margolis Winter Balk, widow of Richard Winter, has written for Rolling Stone, Vogue, Ms, Playboy and the New York Times Magazine and authored the book, Fame. She has taught at Columbia University and San Francisco State University. She lectures on the subjects of deep content, creative entrepreneuring, the psychology of fame, and the seeds and after-effects of hate crimes.

Dr. Gregory Weeks, Chair of the International Relations Department at Webster University in Vienna, has held the Baron Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim Chair at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Charles H. Revson Fellowship for Archival Research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He teaches courses on Austrian and European contemporary history, genocide, and the Holocaust This coming October, he will be the Corrie ten Boom Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute?s Visual History Archive in Los Angeles, where he will complete research for an upcoming book about the Vienna Police during the Third Reich.

Eine Veranstaltung der Sigmund Freud Privatstiftung und der Webster University

In Zusammenarbeit mit der Sigmund Freud Gesellschaft