Bei Anbruch des Tages: Roman (German Edition)

At the same time, contrary to us, Derix does not appear to have had any first hand experience of exceptionally rich people at all, particularly Thyssens. Rich people only mix with rich people, and unless Derix got paid by the word, there is no evidence that she ever in any way qualified for serious comment on their modus operandi. What is new, of course, is that feudalism has been swept away and replaced by democratic societies, where knowledge is broadly accessible and equality before the law is paramount.

They only ever want you to know glorious things about them and keep the realities cloaked behind their outstanding wealth. To suggest that this series is being issued because the Thyssens have suddenly decided to engage in an exercise of honesty, generously letting official historians browse their most private documents, however, is ludicrous. The only reason why Simone Derix is revealing some controversial facts about the Thyssens is because we already revealed them.

Thus, Derix seems to believe she can run with the fox and hunt with the hounds; a balancing act made considerably easier by her pronouncement, early on, that any considerations of ethics or morality are to be categorically excluded from her study. It is just one of the many statements that appears to show how much the arguably authoritarian mindset of her sponsors may have rubbed off on her. The fact that academics employed by publicly funded universities should be used thus as PR-agents for the self-serving entities that are the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Thyssen Industrial History Foundation and the ThyssenKrupp Konzern Archive is highly questionable by any standards, but particularly by supposedly academic ones.

Especially when they claim to be independent. With two or three exceptions they are never properly described as the active, profiting contributors to the existence and aims of the regime. The outrageousnness of her allegation is compounded by the fact that she fails to quote evidence, as reproduced in our book, showing that allied investigators made clear reference to the Thyssens themselves being the real perpetrators and obfuscators.

Yet still, Derix purports to be invoking German greatness, honour and patriotism in her quest for Thyssen gloss. But she fails to properly range them alongside the industrialist families of Krupp, Quandt, Siemens and Bosch, preferring to surround their name hyperbolically with those of the Bismarck, Hohenzollern, Thurn und Taxis and Wittelsbach ruling dynasties.

In reality, many Thyssen heirs chose to turn their backs on Germany and live transnational lives abroad. Their mausoleum is not even accessible to the general public. Contrary to what Derix implies, the iconic name that engenders such a strong feeling of allegiance in Germany is that of the public Thyssen now ThyssenKrupp company alone, as one of the main national employers.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with any respect for the descendants of the formidable August Thyssen, most of whom are, for reason of their chosen absence, completely unknown in the country. Their equal was never seen again in subsequent Thyssen generations. This included marrying into the Hungarian, increasingly faux aristocracy, whereby, even Derix has to admit, by the s every fifth Hungarian citizen pretended to be an aristocrat. Until, that is, social conventions had moved on enough by the s and their daughters were able to marry into the truly old Hungarian dynasties of Batthyany and Zichy.

But until that time, based on their outstanding wealth, this did not stop the brothers from adopting many of the domains of grandeur for themselves. Fritz Thyssen, according to Derix, even spent his time in the early s importing horses from England, introducing English fox hunting to Germany and owning a pack of staghounds.

He also had his servant quarters built lower down from his own in his new country seat, specifically to signal class distinction. And so are her lengthy contortions in presenting Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza as the perfectly assimilated Hungarian country squire. Clearly, it has also become the motto of these Thyssen-financed academics. But these gems of truthfulness are swamped under the fountains of her gushing propaganda designed to make the second generation Thyssens look better than they were.

A huge chance of genuine transparency was wasted here. Derix also fails to draw attention to the fact that the August Thyssen and Josef Thyssen branches of the family developed in very different ways. Fortunately, Derix does not concentrate all her efforts in creative fiction and plagiarisation, but manages to provide at least some substantive politico-economic facts as well.

Fact is that, despite buying Villa Favorita in Lugano, Switzerland in , Heinrich Thyssen continued to spend the largest amounts of his time living a hotel life in a permanent suite in Berlin and elsewhere and also kept a main residence in Holland where Heini Thyssen grew up almost alone, except for the staff.

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His Ticino lawyer Roberto van Aken had to remind him in that he still had not applied for permanent residency in Switzerland. Derix also readjusts the old Thyssen myth that Fritz Thyssen and Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza went their separate ways in business as soon as they inherited from their father, who died in We always said that the two brothers remained strongly interlinked until well into the second half of the 20th century.

But it is her next sentence that most infuriates: She does not say when it was created. To us this sounds like a highly suspicious piece of information. How convenient, especially since no-one outside the Thyssen organisation will ever be able to verify this claim truly independently; or at least until the protective mantle of Professor Manfred Rasch, head of the ThyssenKrupp Konzern Archive, retires.

She then adds that existing Thyssen institutions outside of Germany were used in order to carry out this transfer. From onwards, Fritz Thyssen began to buy real estate in Argentina. We had already detailed in our book how Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, via Hendrik Kouwenhoven, set up in Switzerland the Kaszony Family Foundation in to lodge his inherited participations and the Rohoncz Collection Foundation in to place art works he bought as easily movable capital investments from onwards.

Now Derix writes that the Rohoncz Foundation too was founded in The associated topics of tax evasion and tax avoidance stay completely off her academic radar; ignoring our documented proof. In another bold rewriting of official Thyssen history the author states that the Thyssen brothers frequently acted in parallel in their financial affairs. Derix is hazy about exact dates. Derix points out that these two instruments also allowed secret transactions between the Thyssen brothers.

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Of course, not only was this most royalist of German states close to Switzerland, but it was also, at that time, the cradle of the Nazi movement. Adolf Hitler also much preferred Munich to Berlin. According to Derix, it was starting in that Heinrich Thyssen sold his shares in the United Steelworks to Fritz while Fritz sold his Dutch participations to Heinrich and as a result Heinrich Thyssen alone was in control of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart from onwards.

But in , the Germans found out that there was a considerable discrepancy between the 1,5 million Reichsmark of Dutch participations held in HAIC as had been stated and the actual, true value, which turned out to be to million RM. This is not, however, a conclusion drawn by Simone Derix. One begins to wonder what there was actually left to confiscate from Fritz Thyssen once he fled Germany at the onset of war in Derix admits that his flight happened not least because he preferred to complete his self-interested financial transactions from the safety of Switzerland, with the help of Heinrich Blass at Credit Suisse in Zurich.

For Simone Derix to point this out on behalf of the Thyssen organisation is significant; even if she fails to draw any appropriate conclusions, as they would most likely be at odds with her blue-sky remit. Truly, and in the words of the far more experienced Harald Wixforth no less: Apparently they travelled from Genua, sailing on But what exactly were those wishes? The hubristically delusional Fritz obviously thought he could get rid of Hitler as easily as he had helped him get into power.

Which makes one wonder, why German historians previously felt the need to misrepresent these facts. It illustrates the seriousness in which he was considered to have been guilty of albeit blue collar war crimes, which should have been punishable by incarceration:. Thyssen suffered a collapse and had to go into medical care. In that court, as befitting his insincere character, Fritz Thyssen described himself as penniless. After studying chemistry in Zurich and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he became an assistant at a research laboratory of the Shell Petroleum Company in St Louis.

He then wrote his dissertation at Budapest University and began working in natural resources deposit research. In , Seismos was bought for 1. So, of no little importance for a company which so far, in Thyssen-backed histories, had been portrayed, if at all, as being of little consequence. And not for the secretive Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza either, whose son Heini Thyssen shortly after the war would get his Swiss lawyer Roberto van Aken to lie to the US visa application department thus: From Februar , Armaments and Munitions Minister Albert Speer recommended all possible support for the development of rockets.

While Simone Derix entirely fails to address any aspects of this topic, the lawyer and historian Frank Baranowski has unearthed a highly important document and explains on his website: Deutsche Bank negotiated the transfer of the share capital of 1 million Reichsmark into various hands. The majority was acquired by the solicitor and notary Paul Langkopf of Hanover , RM , which was most likely done on the orders of a client who wished to remain anonymous.

MABAG came to see itself as a company entirely geared to the production of armaments, ….. It just so happens that Paul Langkopf was a professional whose services had been engaged by various members of the Thyssen family over the years. The secrecy of the transaction fits his style completely.

Finally Simone Derix covers two other important topics in her book — as did we, albeit to a different degree -; namely: In both matters, members and associates of the Thyssen family played questionable roles, using their high-level diplomatic and other positions, to help the Thyssens play off one host nation against another, in their pursuit of limitless personal advantage. Kouwenhoven, general representative of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, copyright Stadsarchief Rotterdam.

Three Thyssen brothers in harmony: Stephan Thyssen-Bornemisza with his wife Ingeborg, Hanover, ca. Es ist ein Thema, das uns ganz besonders am Herzen liegt. Derix beschreibt, wie Fritz Anfang des Unsere Forschungen deuten darauf hin, dass dies geschah, sodass der im Tessin verschanzte Baron keine offensichtlichen Besitzungen im Deutschen Reich mehr aufwies.

Wo genau in Rechnitz installierte sich die Partei mit ihren verschiedenen Organisationen? Simone Derix liefert keine Antworten auf diese Fragen, obwohl sie mittels viel wortreichem Wirbel vorgibt, genau das zu tun. Stattdessen schreibt sie in vager, ausweichender Manier: Ihre Behandlung hing von ihrer Position innerhalb der Rassenhierarchie ab, welche die Nazi-Ideologen verfasst hatten. Niemand jedoch wurde so schlecht behandelt wie die Juden. Diese wird im Rahmen der Aufarbeitung der Rechnitzer Kriegsverbrechen nach dem Krieg an besonderer Bedeutung gewinnen. Mit dem Jahr wurde der Nazi-Traum zum Alptraum.

Bis Juli wurden Laut Eva Schwarzmayer wurden ca. Von diesen arbeiteten insgesamt bis zu 6. Dies geschah in Rechnitz mehrmals. Aber sie macht keinerlei Angaben zu diesen anderen Rechnitzer Massakern. Franz Cserer aus Rechnitz gab an, dass ca. Josef Mandel aus Rechnitz machte eine Aussage, dass am Otto Ickowitz berichtete, dass kranke Gefangene aus einer Gruppe, die vom Lager in Bucsu kamen in einem Wald bei Rechnitz ermordet wurden.

Unglaublicherweise behandelt Simone Derix diesen beschleunigenden Horror indem sie die folgende, technokratische Sprache verwendet: Die Personen, die in der Nacht vom Verschiedene Akademiker haben auf diese angebliche Tatsache viel Wert gelegt, um zu zeigen, dass Margit Batthyany nicht die Gastgeberin des Abends gewesen sei, wie wir angegeben haben.

Sie tat dies aber nicht. Man muss also annehmen, dass sie mit den rassistischen und politischen Drangsalierungen der damaligen Zeit einverstanden war. Derix aber zieht diese logische Schlussfolgerung nicht. Ebenso tat es Podezin. Emmerich Cserer aus Rechnitz sagte aus, dass am Josef Muralter gab zu Protokoll, dass er am Sie verbargen in keinster Weise, was dort geschehen war. Wurde Margit Batthyany-Thyssen je aufgefordert, vor Gericht zu erscheinen?

Falls nicht, weshalb nicht? In Wahrheit hat sie ihm ein Alibi verschafft, indem sie sagte, er habe sich die ganze Nacht auf dem Schloss aufgehalten. Simone Derix behauptet auch, Franz Podezin sei in der Sache befragt worden. Dies ist ein seltener, kostbarer Beitrag von Derix zum Fall Rechnitz.

Die Thyssens gaben damit Hans-Joachim Oldenburg nicht nur eine Arbeitsstelle, sondern, so scheint es, auch Schutz vor weiteren Ermittlungen gegen ihn. Ein Brief vom Oldenburg wurde seinerseits am Warum wurde gegen sie nie Anklage erhoben? Warum tun sie dies nicht? Aber bei den Thyssens existiert eine solche Fragmentierung nicht. Die folgenden Statements wurden bisher abgegeben: Auf sie wissen wir keine Antworten…….

Dieses Buch ist eine Kurzfassung der Habilitationsschrift von Simone Derix und wird als solche von deutschen Akademikern als Fakt aufgenommen werden, eine Qualifizierung, gegen die wir eindringlich Einwand erheben. The Thyssens have always avoided revealing the details of their Nazi past, relying on a mixture of denial, obfuscation and bribery. Sometimes this has been successful and sometimes not, as, despite their best laid plans, the books have often revealed more than the Thyssens might have liked, either directly or through the exposure of contradictions.

Germany was a late developer in both its industrialisation and nationhood and emerged onto the international stage with an explosive energy that was to become catastrophic. The Thyssen brothers self-servingly meddled in politics, overtly Fritz or behind the scenes, through discrete diplomatic and society channels Heinrich — though the latter is denied vehemently by Derix and her academic associates.

Both Thyssen brothers helped bring about the eventual enthronement of the Nazis in Yet Simone Derix tries to reinvent them as the guiltlessly entrapped, illustrious captains of industry they never were in the first place. On 8th April , one week after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza gave his Rechnitz estate, which had once been in the Batthyany family for centuries from to , to Margit, according to our research apparently so that he, ensconced in his Swiss hide-away on the shores of Lake Lugano, would not be seen to own any property in the German Reich.

Simone Derix alleges this was instead done for tax reasons.

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All his Ruhr factories being owned by Dutch financial instruments, the Swiss authorities, who until the turning point of the war in were pro-German but whose ultimate stance was one of political neutrality, were satisfied that Heinrich would not become a political problem to them. Through his company Thyssensche Gas- und Wasserwerke later Thyssengas , Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza discreetly continued to fund both Rechnitz castle and the Batthyany matrimony. During WWII, the Walsum coal mine belonging to Thyssengas in the Ruhr used forced labour to the tune of two thirds of its labour force; a record in German industry.

In the Rechnitz area, some mining interests were being exploited by the Thyssengas company. For centuries the huge Rechnitz castle, in whose courtyard, it was said, an entire husars regiment could perform its drill, had been the power centre of Rechnitz. How exactly did this situation develop after the Nazis took charge of the country? Where in Rechnitz did the party and its organisations install themselves?

Simone Derix does not furnish any answers to these important questions, despite pretending to do so, by help of much verbose flourish. Instead, she writes in a vague, evasive manner: In , Jews lived in Rechnitz. But Simone Derix pointedly refuses to acknowledge the anti-semitism of key Thyssens and instead reserves this characteristic for marginal characters.

In the spring of , according to Derix, Hans-Joachim Oldenburg, whose father was a senior engineer at Thyssen and who himself had worked on agricultural estates owned by the Thyssen family, was sent to Rechnitz Castle to take charge of its estate management, which was soon relying on forced labourers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe.

That summer, Franz Podezin arrived in Rechnitz as a civil servant of the Gestapo border post. He also became the leader of the Nazi party in Rechnitz. Either his statement is correct or Derix is right when she alleges that Podezin only came to take up offices in the castle in the autum of when he became Nazi party head of subsection I of section VI Rechnitz of the South-East Earth Wall building works. By avoiding clarity on these points, Derix fudges the issue and contributes to the vindication of culprits — particularly of the Thyssens as owners, funders and residents of the castle.

The activities on this reinforced defense system designed to hold up the Red Army were coordinated by the organisation Todt run by Armaments Minister Albert Speer , by the Wehrmacht major-general Wilhelm Weiss and, in the section in question, by the Gauleiter of Styria, to which Burgenland then belonged, Sigfried Uiberreither.

Locals as well as forced labourers from different nations were employed, whose treatment depended on their position within the racial hierarchies proclaimed by Nazi ideology. Bottom of the heap and therefore having to endure the worst conditions and abuses, were Slavs, Russians and nationals of the states of the Soviet Union. But none of them were as badly treated as the Jews. How exactly did Margit Batthyany-Thyssen spend these 12 years of Nazi tyranny?

In , their Erlenhof stud Nordlicht achieved the same feats, though the German Derby was held in Berlin that year due to the allied bombing damage on Hamburg. At these public gatherings, Margit Batthyany mixed with and was feted by Nazi officials, who looked up to her as a member of the highest-level Nazi-state elite. It is clear that for her the war presented no change in her privileged lifestyle. Margit also travelled regularly to Switzerland during the war, where she met her brother Heini and her father Heinrich in either Lugano, Zurich, Davos or Flims.

They clearly sanctioned her life-style. Again, this is not mentioned by Derix. The only thing that is achieved by these misguided accusations is that once again the Thyssens and Batthyanys are shielded from having to accept their responsibilities which they have so far, apart from Sacha Batthyany, shirked. By , the Nazi dream was turning sour. In March, the German army occupied Hungary and installed a Sondereinsatzkommando under Adolf Eichmann who organised the deportation of its , Jews.

By July, some , had been exterminated in the gas chambers at Auschwitz concentration camp and ca.

In October, when the Hungarian fascists took over from the authoritarian Miklos Horthy, the , Budapest Jews were targeted. According to Eva Schwarzmayer , ca. Of these up to 6, would come to work on the Rechnitz section and be housed in four different camps: Meanwhile, the Nazi Volkssturm last ditch territorial army had been constituted of which Hans Joachim Oldenburg became a member. None of this is mentioned by Simone Derix. This involved both getting rid of any incriminating evidence, including camp inmates, and to strike equally at any members of the home-grown population expressing doubts that Germany could still win the war.

All in all, at least Jews seem to have been killed in Rechnitz in this last phase of the war. According to Austrian investigators, Hungarian Jews were shot in Rechnitz at the beginning of March. Franz Cserer of Rechnitz stated that around mid-March eight sick Jews had been brought from Schachendorf to Rechnitz and that Franz Podezin shot them dead near the Jewish cemetery. The survivor Paul Szomogyi gave evidence that on 26 March, Jews from his group of forced labourers had been killed in Rechnitz.

But not a single mention is made by Derix of the sheer scale of these additional crimes. Otto Ickowitz reported that sick prisoners from a group coming from the Bucsu camp were murdered in a wood near Rechnitz. Unbelievably, Simone Derix deals with this accelerating horror by using the following technocratic language: It almost sounds like a line from the pen of Adolf Eichmann himself. Margit Batthyany would later help the two main alleged perpetrators, Podezin and Oldenburg, flee and avoid prosecution. If she had had nothing to do with the Rechnitz massacre and had found the actions reprehensible, it seems logical that she would have helped bring about the just punishment of the people involved rather than help them evade justice.

Simone Derix seems intent on absolving the Thyssens, even going as far as conjuring up the possibility that Margit might have helped victims — withouth, however, furnishing any evidence. Various academics have placed great emphasis on this fact in order to show that Margit Batthyany was not in fact the hostess of the event, as we had stated. But as long as there are no documents forthcoming proving that any Nazi Party organisation paid for the festivities and Derix does not furnish any , the fact remains that it was Margit Batthyany who was the overall hostess, as it was her family who paid for the castle and anything happening within its walls and grounds, for which documentary evidence is available see here.

Simone Derix acknowledges the central role played by the conglomerate of people based at the Batthyany-Thyssen castle in the terrible abuses taking place in Rechnitz during WWII. She even acknowledges that some people might feel that there is room for directing questions of moral and legal responsibility at its owners. It is a tactic designed to shield powerful individuals and blame the general public. As in previous volumes of this series, it is the Thyssen managers that get apportioned the full responsibility and in this case this falls on Hans-Joachim Oldenburg.

If Margit Batthyany had had a problem with this kind of behaviour, it would have been easy for her to leave the location and settle in any European hotel for the duration of the war. But she did not.

So one must assume that she agreed with the racial and political victimisations that took place. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics.

East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals. Amazon Renewed Refurbished products with a warranty. Amazon Second Chance Pass it on, trade it in, give it a second life. While Simone Derix entirely fails to address any aspects of this topic, the lawyer and historian Frank Baranowski has unearthed a highly important document and explains on his website: Deutsche Bank negotiated the transfer of the share capital of 1 million Reichsmark into various hands.

The majority was acquired by the solicitor and notary Paul Langkopf of Hanover , RM , which was most likely done on the orders of a client who wished to remain anonymous. MABAG came to see itself as a company entirely geared to the production of armaments, ….. It just so happens that Paul Langkopf was a professional whose services had been engaged by various members of the Thyssen family over the years. The secrecy of the transaction fits his style completely. Finally Simone Derix covers two other important topics in her book — as did we, albeit to a different degree -; namely: In both matters, members and associates of the Thyssen family played questionable roles, using their high-level diplomatic and other positions, to help the Thyssens play off one host nation against another, in their pursuit of limitless personal advantage.

Kouwenhoven, general representative of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, copyright Stadsarchief Rotterdam. Three Thyssen brothers in harmony: Stephan Thyssen-Bornemisza with his wife Ingeborg, Hanover, ca. Dies war nicht der Fall und es war vielmehr so, dass sie nunmehr durch unsere Arbeit einem viel breiteren Publikum bekannt waren als vordem. Warum also attackierten sie uns und nahmen die Thyssens und Batthyanys in Schutz, die ihre Arbeit bislang ganz offensichtlich abgelehnt oder ignoriert hatten?

Danach revidierte sie ihre Reaktion. Dabei hatte sie es in Wirklichkeit nicht weiter als bis zur ersten Haltestelle geschafft. War diese Informations-Verarbeitende nur zu faul oder wollte sie von der Richtigstellung gar nichts wissen? Im Independent stand In der FAZ steht Unerfahrenen Menschen sei nur so viel gesagt: Ein Mitglied der Dynastie, Sacha Batthyany, hat nunmehr ein Buch geschrieben, das vorgibt, eine ehrliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Vergangenheit zu sein.

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Es ist die demokratische Pflicht ihrer Nachfahren, das Netz der Misinformation zu durchbrechen und nicht nur die positiven Seiten ihrer Geschichte hervor zu heben, sondern sich auch den negativen zu stellen. We did not learn of the Rechnitz massacre on the Internet, but in Rechnitz itself and from Rechnitz people. When we met them both at the Rechnitz-symposium at the Burgenland County Museum in Eisenstadt Austria in , they too treated us in an unfriendly manner, which we thought could only be because they felt we had ignored their work on purpose.

This was not the case and moreover, because of us, their work was now much more prominent than before. So why were they attacking us and protecting the Thyssens and the Batthyanys who had obviously rejected or ignored their work in the past? In her review, she made statements about the role of Margit Batthyany nee Thyssen-Bornemisza in the Rechnitz massacre, which, according to the rudimentary state of her knowledge about the case, were not hers to make.

So we wrote a comment to her, pointing out the inaccuracy and coarse fatality of her statement. Even the statement concerning the Rechnitz massacre on the official website of the Batthyany family, which is still far from extensive enough, has been admitting for a few years now that this cover-up did happen. So why should an anonymous person, who is obviously not part of the family, disseminate contradictory information?

Devona reacted at great speed and very angrily to the content of our critical analysis. Then she revised her reaction. She then accused us of not having provided the German public with a German-speaking version of our work. But in truth she had not researched anywhere near the ends of the Internet, she had come to rest at its very first stop.

Our book on the Thyssens exists in German, but for Devona it did not exist in German, because on Wikipedia it did not say that it exists in German. Was this information handler just too lazy or did she not want to know about the correction? Wikipedia as a reference point is problematic to us, particularly because FAZ in , during the translation of our article from English to German, carried out several changes to our text, after, amongst other things, conversations with the presumptious head of the ThyssenKrupp archives, Professor Manfred Rasch, and after checking various Wikipedia-pages.

The most important one of these changes is this: Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza did not settle permanently in Switzerland in , i.

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The Independent article said , but the FAZ article says People with adequate historical knowledge know what that means and the roles of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and of Switzerland during the Second World War have been explained at length in our book. To the less experienced we say simply this: And she refused emphatically to look into the matter in a way that was befitting its gravity.

The outrageousness and the aberration lies with the crimes that were committed in the name of the German people during the Second World War. The impertinence lies with the fact that the Thyssens who had married into and financed parts of the Batthyany family gave aid to the anti-democratic, grievously inhumane Nazi-regime, that they set the parameters in which the monstrous crimes against above all the Jews, but also against other people, including the crimes against the German people and their honour, could be carried out. It is impertinent that they have remained silent about it for 70 years, have denied their role and glorified their deeds.

It is impertinent that they, in short, have misled the general public and that in large parts they continue to do so. In arch-conservative Austria, the Batthyanys who Sacha Batthyany obviously considers himself part of and vice-a-versa, as he lets himself be and is pictured in their midst on their homepage — last row, second from right in the big group picture of the younger generation continue to have a special status which derives from their long feudal history the current head of the clan, Count Ladislaus Pascal Batthyany-Strattmann, is a Gentleman of the Papal Household!

One member of the dynasty, Sacha Batthyany, has now written a book, which purports to be an honest examination of the past. Most of the commentators of the Rechnitz massacre say they agree that the graves of the victims have to be found. But while local people have claimed they know where the graves are and the original Russian investigations certainly located them, not everyone amongst the more powerful members of the community, both past and present, seem to be equally willing to contribute to such transparency.

While it appears to be utopic to hope that this might change, times have moved on rapidly since , when our book first appeared. Thyssenkrupp is now an ailing colossus, whose name quite possibly might not exist in its present form in the foreseeable future, following a sale or take-over of all or parts. And German legislation concerning the prosecution of Nazi crimes no longer assumes automatic guiltlessness if a direct participation in acts of killing cannot be proven. A presence and role in the overall crime suffices, and an administrative office some distance away from a gas chamber is close enough for its essential contribution to the effectiveness of the killing machine to be proven.

But the clock of historical honesty is ticking relentlessly for the big fish too, who still are not working through their past voluntarily and comprehensively. It is the democratic duty of their descendants finally to cut through the web of misinformation and stick by not only the positive sides of their history but the negative sides too. Only through their confession can the general public learn the last serious lessons from this history.