Austrian Service Abroad

Austrian Service Abroad
Founded	1998, Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria by Andreas Maislinger
Area served	Global
Focus	Holocaust memorials, Anti-fascism, Humanitarian aid, Development aid, Peace movement
Method	National service alternatives, projects, seminars
Website	www.auslandsdienst.at/

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Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit initiative and was founded in 1998 by Andreas Maislinger and Andreas Hörtnagl. Since 2001 Michael Prochazka is part of the managing committee.

[edit] General Information

The association for Services Abroad, founded in 1998 by Andreas Hörtnagl and Andreas Maislinger was renamed in 2006 as Austrian Service Abroad. Since 2001 Michael Prochazka is also in the board of directors of the non-governmental organization. Once a month a meeting takes place in each federal state.

[edit] Structure

First young Austrian started in Auschwitz on September 1, 1992

The organization provides positions for an alternative Austrian national service all over the world and is based in Innsbruck. The regular nine month alternative national service (Zivildienst) is substituted by a 12-month service at one of its partner organisations abroad. There are great variations in the requirements. Austrian Service Abroad is an institution which provides young male Austrians with a government funded alternative to the compulsory military service. Its main focuses are social work and Holocaust Memorial Service.

[edit] Types of service

Austrian Service Abroad offers three different types of Zivildienst-substitutes:

Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (Österreichischer Gedenkdienst)^[1]

This program has already been founded in 1992 and is a part of the association Austrian Service Abroad since 1998. It deals with the victims of Nazism. Austrian Holocaust Memorial servants work for Holocaust memorials, like museums and research facilities (for example at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest or Yad Vashem in Jerusalem)

For several years now, Austrian Holocaust Memorial servants are also sent to places of assignment in former refuge countries of the victim groups persecuted by the Nazis as for example the Casa Stefan Zweig in Petrópolis (Brazil), the Centre for Jewish Studies in Shanghai as well as the Jewish Museum of Australia in Melbourne. Since 1992 hundreds of young Austrian Holocaust Memorial servants in 22 countries have reappraised the history of the Holocaust worldwide and made an important contribution to the Austrian processing of history.

Austrian Social Service (Österreichischer Sozialdienst)

It is performed within the scope of projects that serve the economic and social development of the respective country. Social servants are active in the following areas: projects for street-children, educational projects and children's villages, care for the old and handicapped, medical care as well as care and help for homosexuals.

Further places of assignment are environmental projects and developing projects (for example: improvement of drinking water supplies) in the countries of the Third World. Andreas Daniel Matt, the first foreign servant of the year who has provided his social service in 2004 in a SOS children's village in Lahore (Pakistan) has, with the organization proLoka, founded even another place of assignment.

Since October, 1998 hundreds of Austrian Social servants were predominantly assigned to countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia. But also organizations like royal London Society for the Blind in England and the orphanage faith in Saint Petersburg (Russia) are part of this worldwide network.

Austrian Peace Service (Österreichischer Friedensdienst)

Peace servants are occupied within organizations that serve the achievement or protection of peace in connection with armed conflicts. They work, e.g., in non-state organizations in Israel where they organize workshops or common initiatives of the conflicting parties.

In Nanjing in China a peace service application place exists since 2008 in the John Rabe house which reappraises the massacre of Nanjing in 1937. This edged out event still strains the Sino-Japanese relations and was decisive in 2005 for wide protests in Beijing and other towns. The Japanese school book quarrel led in China to movements against falsification of history in Japanese school books. That's why the Austrian Peace Service donated together with the Thomas Rabe Community Center in 2009 for the first time the John Rabe Award.

[edit] International Council

The International Council is the advisory arm for the executive committee of the Austrian Service Abroad regarding all matters of the respective country.

Ernst Florian Winter, Chairman

Ernst Florian Winter, Chairman of the International Council

Argentina: Erika Rosenberg
Australia: Paul R. Bartrop, Daniel James Schuster
Bosnia and Herzegovina: Eli Tauber
Brazil: Alberto Dines
Canada: Walter Absil
Costa Rica: Roland Spendlingwimmer
Croatia: Branko Lustig
France: Michel Cullin, Beate Klarsfeld
Georgia: Gabriela von Habsburg
Germany: Thomas Rabe
Hungary: György Dalos
India: Barbara Nath-Wiser
Israel: Ben Segenreich
Italy: Camilla Brunelli
Palestinian territories: Andreas Sami Prauhart
Poland: Władysław Bartoszewski
Russia: Ilya Altman
Sweden: Gerald Nagler
United States: Randolph M. Bell, Anna Rosmus^[2]

[edit] Partners

The US is currently the country with the largest number of places offered for Holocaust Memorial Service. Well known Holocaust Museums and Memorial Institutions like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Los Angeles received several Holocaust Memorial Servants since the 1990s.