Opening: The Vienna Model of Radicalization

On March 12, 2025 at 6:30 PM, LBI will open the exhibit The Vienna Model of Radicalization. This new exhibition, on show for the first time in the United States, explores the significance of the Holocaust in Austria and highlights the role of Vienna as gateway for the radicalization of antisemitic policy in the Nazi State. The opening will take place on the anniversary of the Anschluss, the date of the German annexation of Austria in 1938.

The opening will include a talk by Michaela Raggam-Blesch and a Q&A with a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, George Langnas. Attendees will then have the opportunity to view the exhibition.

This event will be held in person at the Center for Jewish History. If you are not able to attend, the talk will be recorded and posted on YouTube.

Our Speaker

Michaela Raggam-Blesch is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna with the research project “Bonds of Intimacy and Dependency: Survival Strategies of Intermarried Families in Nazi- Dominated Europe” funded by the Austrian Science Fund. She recently submitted her habilitation on “mixed families” during the Nazi period in Vienna.

Dr. Raggam-Blesch has received various fellowships and was awarded the Leon Zelman Award for Dialogue and Understanding in 2022. She was the curator of several exhibitions on the Holocaust – most recently, the exhibit “The Vienna Model of Radicalization: Austria and the Shoah.”

Dr. Raggam-Blesch has focused extensively on the Holocaust in Austria. She co- authored Topographie der Shoah: Gedächtnisorte des zerstörten jüdischen Wien (Vienna 2015) and co-edited Letzte Orte: Die Wiener Sammellager und die Deportationen 1941/42 (Vienna 2021), both of which are now in their second editions.