Doctorates restored for Nazi victims

VIENNA, March 22 (UPI) -- The University of Vienna will award doctoral degrees to 32 former students whose academic credentials were invalidated under Nazi rule.

The 32 doctorates, which will be awarded posthumously March 31, are the latest of more than 200 academic titles the university has re-validated, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse reports.

The degrees were retracted for racial and political reasons during World War II, when Austria was occupied by Nazi Germany.

The University of Vienna was legally required to restore retracted degrees soon after the war, and did restore 181 academic titles during 1955.

The 32 degrees to now be restored were only recently discovered to have been retracted.

Among those whose degrees will be posthumously restored are author Stefan Zweig and psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim.

The invitation to the reinstatement ceremony reads, "Today's University of Vienna acknowledges without reservation its guilt and responsibility for this inhumane, illegal and ignoble act during the Nazi period."