AUSTRIA — The Austrian Service Abroad program will participate in the dedication of an Anne Frank Sapling at the Sousa Mendes Museum in Portugal on July 9, 2026. The event is part of the Sousa Mendes Foundation's Educators' Institute, to which 20 teachers have been invited.

Established in 1998, the program offers young Austrians an alternative to military service. Since its founding, 1,323 Austrians aged 17 and older have participated, working in non-profits globally for 10 months. Participants work 34 hours each week at no cost to receiving organizations and are currently located in 66 countries.

The Sousa Mendes Foundation, a Long Island-based nonprofit, joined the program in 2022. Olivia Mattis, president and CEO of the foundation, said the partnership has been a "big boon to our work and allows us to greatly expand our Holocaust educational offerings." The foundation works to preserve the memory of Holocaust rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat who issued visas to thousands of refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied France.

Robin Bigga-Piskernig, 19, is the fifth Austrian participant at the foundation. "We just now finished new translations for a graphic novel that's going to be published in an English version as well as French and German," Bigga-Piskernig said. Interns were integral to the creation of graphic novels about Sousa Mendes and the families he saved, and workers researched backgrounds of rescuers featured in a custom set of 52 poker-sized playing cards created by the foundation.

"The program grew out of Austria's long and difficult process of confronting National Socialism and the Holocaust," said Jean Lou Cloos, managing director of Austrian Service Abroad. "For decades after 1945, Austria often emphasized its own victimhood under Nazi Germany." He noted that volunteers serve "where memory is preserved, researched, and passed on, whether that is Auschwitz, Yad Vashem, a Jewish museum in Europe, or a Holocaust education center in the United States."