Fotoeins Fotografie

Above/featured: Shoah Namensmauern Gedenkstätte (Holocaust Wall of Names memorial site).

I drag my fingers gently down each stone block, across the fine indentations and the print of countless names.

I give quiet voice to each name I see.

In Vienna’s 9th district is a small green space, Ostarrichi Park, in front of the Österreichische Nationalbank (Austrian National Bank). The park is home to the Shoah Namensmauern Gedenkstätte (Holocaust Wall of Names Memorial), dedicated to over 64-thousand Austrian Jews murdered during the Nazi regime. Public inauguration of the memorial occurred on 9 November 2021 on the 83rd anniversary of the Pogromnacht.

The establishment and realization of the memorial has been a lifelong project for Vienna-born Holocaust survivor Kurt Yakov Tutter, who with his family fled to Belgium in 1930. Kurt and his younger sister, Rita, survived with the help of a Belgian family; their parents were deported and murdered in Auschwitz.

He made a new home in Toronto, Canada, where in 2000 he began working to create a memorial to murdered Austrian Jews. Funding from the national Austria state emphasized the enormous significance of the historical memorial; responsibility for continuing maintenance of the memorial is now shared by the Austria National Fund and the City of Vienna.

The names of over 64-thousand children, women, and men are engraved onto 160 slabs of granite; the slabs are arranged in an oval ring. Within the open and uncovered space, visitors to the memorial can walk briskly past each vertical block, but the air is thick with names.

Selma ABZUG, geboren/born 1886
Ernst ADLER, geb./b. 1904
David ALBRECHT, geb./b. 1871
Grete ALTMANN, geb./b. 1928
•
•
•
Therese WEISZ, geb./b. 1867
Eva WELLISCH, geb./b. 1933
Alfred WERTHEIM, geb./b. 1920
Edmund WESTFRIED, geb./b. 1890

Audio: Mr. Tutter speaks about Austria’s very late road to dealing with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) and why he created the Wall of Names project.

More than 64-thousand Names

Front (south) entrance from Alser Strasse, facing north to the Austrian National Bank in the background.

“In memory of the more than 65-thousand Jewish children, women, and men of Austria, who were murdered during the years 1938–1945. They were persecuted, mocked, robbed, and tortured by National Socialists and their supporters, before deportation to ghettos and concentration camps. Countless Austrians participated in their murder.”

Kurt Yakov Tutter is a Austrian-Canadian artist: born in Vienna, lives now in Toronto.

Surnames “N” and “O”.

Last name “A.”

Last name “W.”

Facing south, near the memorial’s north entrance at Otto-Wagner-Platz.

… We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened; therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.

— Primo Levi: Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor, and author.

•   Jewish Welcome Service
•   Austria National Fund for Victims of National Socialism
•   Austrian Holocaust Victims database, DÖW (Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance)

Directions

Free to the public, Ostarrichi Park and the memorial are open at all hours.
Public transport with Wiener Linien:
•   U-Bahn U2 to station “Schottentor”; OR
•   tram 43 or 44 to stop “Landesgerichtstrasse”; OR
•   tram 5, 33, 43, or 44 to stop “Lange Gasse”.

( View map location at OpenStreetMap )

I made all photos above on 25 May 2022 and May 2023 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie on fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-msk.