Memorial for the Austrian Jewish victims of the Shoah
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The memorial for the Austrian Jewish victims of the Shoah (also: memorial for the 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews of the Shoah ) stands on Judenplatz in the first district of Vienna . The central memorial for the Austrian victims of the Shoah was designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread and unveiled in 2000.
Emergence
The memorial goes back to an initiative by Simon Wiesenthal , the building owner is the City of Vienna under Mayor Michael Häupl , the Whiteread design was selected by an international jury chaired by the architect Hans Hollein . Nine artists and architects from Austria , Israel , Great Britain and the United States were originally invited to the competition. The drafts submitted had to take into account a number of fixed requirements: the location (Judenplatz), a memorial inscription and a list of all concentration camps in which Austrian Jews died. The memorial was unveiled on October 25, 2000, i.e. one day before the Austrian national holiday , in the presence of Federal President Thomas Klestil , the President of the Viennese cultural community Ariel Muzicant , Simon Wiesenthal, the architect, other dignitaries and guests.
layout
The memorial is a reinforced concrete structure with a base area of 10 × 7 meters and a height of 3.8 meters. The outer surfaces of the cuboid are modeled as library walls facing outwards. The shelves of the memorial are stocked with a seemingly endless number of editions of the same book, which represent the large number of victims and their life stories. The books are in their destination, but the position of the books on the shelf is unnatural, just as death is determined and just as a natural ending was withheld from the victims. The content of the books remains hidden. The double doors, which indicate the possibility of coming and going, are closed, missing door handles explain this condition as unchangeable.
The names of the places where Austrian Jews were murdered by Nazi perpetrators during the Nazi regime are recorded on the floor friezes embedded in the base of the memorial : Auschwitz , Belzec , Bergen-Belsen , Brčko , Buchenwald , Chelmno , Dachau , Flossenbürg , Groß-Rosen , Gurs , Hartheim , Izbica , Jasenovac , Jungfernhof , Kaiserwald , Kielce , Kowno (Kauen) , Lagow , Lodz , Lublin , Majdanek , Maly Trostinec , Mauthausen , Minsk , Mittelbau / Dora , Modliborzyce , Natzweiler , Neuengamme , Nisko , Opatow , Opole , Ravensbrück , Rejowiec , Riga , Šabac , Sachsenhausen , Salaspils , San Sabba , Sobibor , Stutthof , Theresienstadt , Trawniki , Treblinka , Wlodawa , Zamość .
A text in German, English and Hebrew can be read on the plinth in front of the closed double doors, which refers to the crime of the Shoah and the estimated number of Austrian victims. In the style of Whiteread's “empty spaces”, the memorial represents a library with books facing outwards. The memorial can be understood as an appreciation of Judaism as the religion of the “book”, but also addresses the cultural void created by the genocide of European Jews (memory and loss).
References to Judenplatz
The Judenplatz and the memorial is unique in Europe, it combines the excavations of the medieval synagogue under the ground, which was burned down in the so-called " Wiener Geserah " from 1420, with the modern memorial above the earth for the victims of the Shoah. Next to the memorial, an engraving in the pavement indicates the position of the bima of the excavation site below.
On the ground floor of the neighboring Misrachi House , the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance, in cooperation with the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, has set up an information area on the Shoah. The names and dates of the 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews and the circumstances that led to their persecution and murder are presented to the public here. The Museum am Judenplatz , which is also in the Misrachi House, has a permanent exhibition on the history of Judenplatz, the foundations of the destroyed Or-Sarua Synagogue directly under the memorial can be viewed ( see also: Jews in Vienna ).
Opposite the memorial is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's monument , which was melted down by the Nazis in 1938 and rebuilt after the war. The memorial stands in contrast to Lessing's ideas of the Enlightenment and the tolerance and emancipation of European Jews and the failure of his humanistic philosophy due to anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust .
Behind the memorial stands one of the oldest buildings in Vienna, the “Jordanhaus” with a late Gothic relief, which alludes to the massacre in the synagogue and the subsequent cremation of the survivors, in Latin the killing of the Jews as “the cleansing of dirt and evil “(For the exact text see: Judenplatz # Jordan-Haus ).
A memorial plaque on Judenplatz 6 refers to the anti-Semitic inscription on the Jordanhaus. After long discussions, it was put up by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn on October 29, 1998 with an admission of Christian failure in view of the murder of European Jews.
Impact history
The erection of the memorial was strongly criticized by parts of the population who did not want a separate memorial for the Jewish victims next to the existing memorial against war and fascism by Alfred Hrdlicka behind the Vienna State Opera . Neighbors founded an initiative because they feared for the "beauty" of the square. The architect's goal of reminding the viewer of the crime of the Shoah by contrasting the unmistakable, modern memorial with the historical old buildings around Judenplatz, seems to have been fulfilled.
The City of Vienna was awarded the special prize of the City of Vicenza in Italy in 2002 for the design of Judenplatz by the “Dedalo Minosse International Prize's Jury” .
During his state visit to Austria in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI. at this memorial of the victims of the Shoah in the presence of the Chief Rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg and other Jewish, Catholic and political dignitaries.
literature
- Simon Wiesenthal: Project: Judenplatz Vienna . Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-552-04982-7 .
- Judenplatz Vienna 1996: Competition, memorial and memorial for the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime in Austria 1938–1945 . Folio Verlag, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85256-046-2 .
- Gerhard Milchram: Judenplatz: place of remembrance . Pichler Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85431-217-2 .
- Brandon Taylor: Contemporary Art (Trade) . Prentice Hall, London 2004, ISBN 0-13-118174-2 .
- Holger Thünemann: Holocaust Reception and History Culture . Central Holocaust Monuments in Controversy. A German-Austrian comparison . Schulz-Kirchner Verlag, Idstein 2005, ISBN 3-8248-0381-X .
- Mechtild Widrich: "The Willed and the Unwilled Monument. Judenplatz Vienna and Riegl's Monument Preservation." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (September 2013), 382-398.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ derstandard.at | Silent Holocaust remembrance at Judenplatz , September 7, 2007.
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 42 " N , 16 ° 22 ′ 10.2" E