Vienna, The Jewish Memorial

Where every we go in Europe, I look for Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks that commemorate the lives of people who once lived in these specific places. These brass memorials mark the last place that person or family lived before being forced to leave. Many were going to their deaths.

Here are a few of the Stolpersteine I noticed in Vienna. Interestingly, each of these documents a group or family. One below memorializes a group of 23 Jewish men and women who lived or boarded in one house.

My heart goes out to these individuals. I honor their memory.

As we wandered in Vienna today, we happened upon this Jewish memorial.

This memorial was built where the old 1600s synagogue once stood (the brass marker in the ground in the pic above). The large block of cement represents a library. The sides are all cement books on shelves, none accessible. Just a solid block. Here’s what the sign said:

Memorial to the Austrian Jewish Victims of the Shoah

This memorial commemorates the 65,000 Viennese Jews who were murdered during the Nazi regime. It was created on the initiative of Simon Wiesenthal (1908-2005). The reinforced concrete cube by the British artist Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) represents an introverted, non-accessible library. Countless editions of the apparently same book stand for the large number of victims and their life stories.

The Judenplatz is a place of Jewish memory and present. It was the center of Vienna’s first Jewish community in the Middle Ages and was home to one of the largest synagogues in Europe. Important rabbinical leaders taught here. 1421, the entire Jewish community was expelled or murdered. The foundations of the destroyed synagogue are located below the memorial. They were discovered in 1995 and can be visited in Museum Judenplatz. There you can also get insights into the history of the medieval Jewish community and the emergence of the memorial.

All those life stories, never told. Books closed. For them, their time on earth ended. 65,000 just from Vienna. It’s all so sad to me. Not just that they died, but how they died. Tragically, brutally. There were so many unkind people hurting others, tearing families apart, creating fear and horror.

This simple gray cement memorial really moved me. It was still. Quiet. Silent. Just like the voices of 65,000 people. What we wouldn’t pay to hear each of their stories now.