What is it?
The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Gedenkdienst) is an alternative to Austria's compulsory national military service. Its participants serve at major Holocaust institutions.

Gedenkdienst was founded by Dr. Andreas Maislinger, political scientist from Innsbruck (Tyrol, Austria) who took on the basic idea from the German Aktion Suehnezeichen (Action for Reconciliation). Maislinger himself had worked as a volunteer with the perspective of this initiative at the Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In 1991 the required legislation was enacted by the Austrian Government and Andreas Maislinger began organizing what is to become known as Gedenkdienst, an independent though largely government funded foundation. The intent of Gedenkdienst is to emphasize the recognition of Austria's part of the collective responsibilty for the Holocaust and the responsibility for each and every one of us to remember and to fight for "never again" (quote from the speech of the former Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitzky, Jerusalem, June 1993).

Austrian Gedenkdienst is a unique international network for Holocaust Foundations that provides assistance to important archives and museums. Since 1992 there have been about 100 Gedenkdienst interns, mostly in their 20s, working for organizations studying and preserving Holocaust history in lieu of military service back home.

The Verein fuer Dienste im Ausland is the main body of the organization and authorized by the Austrian Government to send Gedenkdienst interns to partner organizations worldwide.

Currently Michael Feuerstein and Martin Heim are working as Gedenkdienst Interns at the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies.

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Excerpt from the Austrian government declaration
February 3rd, 2000

"Austria accepts her responsibility arising out of the tragic history of the 20th century and the horrendous crimes of the National Socialist regime. Our country is facing up to the light and dark sides of its past and to the deeds of all Austrians, good and evil, as its responsibility. Nationalism, dictatorship and intolerance brought war, xenophobia, bondage, racism and mass murder. The singularity of the crimes of the Holocaust which are without precedent in history are an exhortation to permanent alertness against all forms of dictatorship and totalitarianism."