Parkring 4: A look at the dark past of the Graz police

Parkring 4: A look at the dark past of the Graz police

In the heart of Graz, directly at Parkring 4, is the Styrian State Police Directorate, a building that many citizens know as a contact point for passport applications or driving licenses. But beneath the surface lies a tragic story: During the Nazi era, this building was the headquarters of the Gestapo, the secret state police, which was responsible for monitoring and persecuting opponents of the regime.

A team of historians led by Professor Barbara Stelzl-Marx from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for War Impact Research has worked intensively on this dark chapter over the last two years. The role of the police during National Socialism has been largely neglected in academic research. Thanks to the support of Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP), who provided access to archive documents, the team was able to gain new insights and create a comprehensive work of over 800 pages that sheds light on the executive branch and its behavior during this terrible time.

The dark history of the police

A central theme in the work is the question of what role the police played in the Holocaust. Stelzl-Marx states that the police were not just a small cog in the wheels of the Nazi regime, but also played a crucial role in the implementation of violence and mass murder. Around a third of police officers were members of the NSDAP, the SA or the SS. At the beginning of the post-war period, many of them were classified as "incriminated", but denazification in Austria was often ineffective in practice, so many police officers were able to quickly return to duty.

The exhibition “Hitler's Executive”, which will be on display in the GrazMuseum from Wednesday, specifically addresses these topics. Curator Martina Zerovnik will explore the period between 1938 and 1945 and asks how the police committed crimes and what limits there are to obedience and police violence. Questions that are also relevant today.

Personal stories and historical analysis

Research has also brought individual fates to light. A notable figure is Gustav Schwarzenegger, the father of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gustav served as a gendarme in the Graz region during the war and took part in various military operations. The Simon Wiesenthal Center was commissioned to investigate his war effort back in 1990. However, according to research, no concrete evidence of his involvement in war crimes could be found, and after the war he was considered “unincriminated.”

These historical appraisals are not only important for understanding the past, but they also open up a dialogue about the limits of police action and the responsibility of officers in critical times. Questions about individual freedom of action and moral dilemmas are addressed in the exhibition and in the scientific publication, which also stimulates the necessary critical reflections.