Among many Austrians, there remains a widespread sentiment that their country was Adolf Hitler’s “first victim,” annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938—whereas in fact Austria was joined with, not conquered by, the Third Reich, and its Gentile citizens were treated as the equals of Germans. In the past two decades, attitudes have begun to change, and Austria has taken some steps toward confronting its past, including the role of countless Austrians in carrying out the Final Solution. Hans Hochstöger has made a contribution to this effort with his film Endphase, which was recently screened in the UK for the first time. Rich Tenorio writes:

Hans Hochstöger remembers the Austrian village of Hofamt Priel as an idyllic place. He grew up in this bucolic setting an hour away from Vienna, with farmhouses that are in calm contrast to the Austrian capital. From his teenage years onward, however, Hochstöger’s perception of his hometown was shattered when he learned about its World War II history. In May 1945, during the closing days of the war in Europe, over 200 Jews were murdered in Hofamt Priel.

The dark story is part of the narrative of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust. As the film explains, over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were deported from their homeland in 1944, with 80 percent of them, roughly 320,000, perishing soon after their arrival at Auschwitz. In Austria, there were 15,000 [of these Jewish] deportees doing forced labor, including repairing roofs in Vienna after Allied air raids. The German position became untenable with the approach of the Red Army.

At the end of April 1945, [a group of these] Jews were temporarily housed in neighboring Persenbeug at a barracks for workers at a power plant on the Danube River. Hochstöger states that an SS unit came to the barracks on the evening of May 2, 1945, brought most of the Jews to Hofamt Priel and gunned them down there, with help from several local Austrians.

In a sense, the most successful negotiation with Hamas was the recent agreement securing the release of Edan Alexander, the last living hostage with a U.S. passport. Unlike those previously handed over, he wasn’t exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, and there was no cease-fire. Dan Diker explains what Hamas got out of the deal:

Alexander’s unconditional release [was] designed to legitimize Hamas further as a viable negotiator and to keep Hamas in power, particularly at a moment when Israel is expanding its military campaign to conquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas as a military, political, and civil power. Israel has no other option than defeating Hamas. Hamas’s “humanitarian” move encourages American pressure on Israel to end its counterterrorism war in service of advancing additional U.S. efforts to release hostages over time, legitimizing Hamas while it rearms, resupplies, and reestablishes it military power and control.

In fact, Hamas-affiliated media have claimed credit for successful negotiations with the U.S., branding the release of Edan Alexander as the “Edan deal,” portraying Hamas as a rising international player, sidelining Israel from direct talks with DC, and declaring this a “new phase in the conflict.”

Fortunately, however, Washington has not coerced Jerusalem into ceasing the war since Alexander’s return. Nor, Diker observes, did the deal drive a wedge between the two allies, despite much speculation about the possibility.