Austrian man finds out his grandfather was a Nazi in just a few clicks. He's encouraging others to do the same

It only took Christian Rainer a few seconds to confirm what he’d long suspected — his grandfather was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.

Rainer, a journalist in Vienna, Austria, recently plugged his grandfather’s name into a new online database that allows people to search through millions of Nazi Party membership cards.

He learned that Franz Rainer (1886-1961) had signed up for the Nazi Party on April 21, 1938, several weeks after Germany annexed Austria. 

“I knew the past of my family in the south of Austria, and they were all right-wing, probably anti-Semitic. And some of the members still are,” Rainer told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “So I was not surprised.”

He never met his grandfather, who died the year before he was born. His father, who was born in 1922, did not show up in the database.

“That was a real relief,” he said. “I hadn’t suspected him, but [he] could have been.”

Some relieved, some shocked 

The search tool was developed by the German newspaper Die Zeit using millions of member index cards first digitized and released online by the U.S. National Archives in March. 

Before that, the information was only available by request from either the U.S. National Archives or the German Federal Archives, and was not available online. 

Christian Staas, head of Die Zeit’s history department, says the U.S. archives are difficult to search. What’s more, when they were first released, so many people flocked to the site that it crashed.

“So we thought it might be a good idea to make these files searchable for everyone in a simpler way,” Staas told CBC in an email.

The database is behind a paywall, but anyone can sign up for a free trial to use it. Users can search by name, and further narrow it down using date of birth, place of birth or region.

The newspaper says millions of people have accessed the database since it launched in early April, and many have shared their experiences.

“Some say they suspected that certain members of their family were party members, and that they feel relieved now to have proof. Others tell us they were shocked, and discovered they had been told lies about their ancestors,” Staas said.

“What strikes me is that even people who are very interested in historical questions, even professional historians, admitted that they had never done systematic research into their family history — and that they are doing it now.”

The database contains 8.2 million names, which is roughly 90 per cent of all former Nazi Party members, Die Zeit says. However, there are still some gaps in the data, and the newspaper warns that some results, which were organized using artificial intelligence, “may be incomplete or contain errors.”

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis murdered six million Jews, as well as millions of other members of persecuted groups, during what is now known as the Holocaust.

‘It could happen anywhere’

Rainer encourages anyone to try the search tool. He noted that many Nazis migrated during and after the Second World War to other countries, including the U.S. and Canada. 

It’s not about taking on guilt or personal responsibility for the crimes of people who died a long time ago, he says. It’s about opening your eyes to the truth.

Austrians, in particular, he says, are still coming to grips with their country’s Nazi past. 

While Nazi Germany annexed Austria, historians have increasingly written about the widespread support for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Austria during the Second World War, and the country’s role in anti-Jewish pogroms. 

“There was a lot of repression, and it took one or two generations to really start talking about it,” Rainer said.

With the rise of the far-right parties in governments around the world, Rainer says it’s more important than ever to be honest about history and vigilant against repeating it.

“It could happen anywhere,” he said. “It could happen in Canada. Look at the United States.”