Memorial to the memory of the former Jewish community Mattersburg

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A quote from Kofi Annan as an inscription on the right stele

The memorial to the memory of the former Jewish community Mattersburg commemorates the expulsion and destruction of the Jewish community from Mattersburg in Burgenland by the Nazi regime . It is located on the site of the Mattersburg synagogue, which was destroyed in 1940 . The memorial was designed, financed and realized by Michael Feyer , and it was presented to the public on November 5, 2017 in a festive ceremony by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen .

Jewish community of Mattersburg

The Jewish community of Mattersburg, until 1924 Mattersdorf, was one of the seven communities under the protection of the Esterházy family . In 1851 around 1,500 Jews lived in Mattersdorf, that was a third of the population. Immediately after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, particularly brutal persecution of the Jews began in Burgenland, and by October there were no more Jewish communities. A detention camp was set up in Frauenkirchen, in which Jews and exponents of the Fatherland Front were imprisoned. In the summer of 1938 the Jewish residents were expatriated and no longer had the right to stay. At the end of September 1938, Nazi mayor Franz Giefing announced “Mattersburg is free of Jews!” And raised the white flag on the synagogue.

A total of 500 members of the Mattersburg community were expelled, expropriated and expatriated. Around 100 were murdered in concentration camps. Many of them are still unknown to this day where they have gone.

synagogue

In 1940 most of the Jewish quarter was blown up. The synagogue, which had already been looted and destroyed as part of the November pogroms of 1938, was "razed to the ground in September 1940 by a pioneer train through targeted blasting."

Inscriptions

Symbolic representation of
a menorah
WE REMEMBER
זכור 		1938
WERE ALL
MATTER BURGER JEWS
DISTRIBUTED
MANY WERE MURDERED

THE JEWISH TEMPLE
OF HERE STAND
HAS BEEN IN
Kristallnacht
DESOLATE
PILLAGED
AND 1940 WITH LARGE
PARTS OF THE JEWISH
QUARTER BUSTED

FOR OVER 400 YEARS
HAS BEEN THE
JEWISH LIFE
IN MATTERSBURG
OF THE
NAZI BARBARIANS
FORCE HAS ENDED 		ALL THAT
EVIL NEEDS
TO TRIUMPH
IS THE SILENCE
OF THE MAJORITY

Views

  • overall view

  • Left stele

  • Middle stele

  • Right stele, in
    front of it an archway

  • Memorial stones

opening

The ceremony also commemorated the pogrom night of November 9, 1938. The following spoke in front of the Federal President:

  • Isaac Ehrenfeld, chief rabbi of the Orthodox community Kirjat Mattersdorf near Jerusalem and grandson of the last chief rabbi of Mattersburg,
  • Talya Lador-Fresher , Ambassador of the State of Israel,
  • Ingrid Salamon , Mayor of the City of Mattersburg,
  • Hans Niessl , Governor of Burgenland, and
  • Gert Tschögl, historian of the Burgenland Research Society.

The event was musically framed by the violinist Aliosha Biz and the clarinetist Sasha Danilov . The chief cantor of the Vienna City Temple , Shmuel Barzilai , sang the funeral prayer “ El male rachamim ”. This was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial for Roma and Sinti in Lackenbach .

Web links

Commons : Memorial to the memory of the former Jewish community Mattersburg  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Veronika Schmid: Virtual reconstruction of the former synagogue in Mattersburg (Nagymarton; Mattersdorf) , diploma thesis for the purpose of obtaining the academic degree of graduate engineer, Vienna 2016
  2. ↑ Burgenländische Volkszeitung : Memorial opened: Remembrance of the Jewish community , November 6, 2017

Coordinates: 47 ° 44 ′ 16.9 ″  N , 16 ° 24 ′ 1.1 ″  E