Fotoeins Fotografie

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Posts tagged ‘Shoah-Namensmauern-Gedenkstaette’

Schottentor, Votivkirche, 9. Bezirk, Alsergrund, Wien, Vienna, Austria, Österreich, fotoeins.com

Vienna: 9 spots in the 9th district

Above/featured: Votivkirche (Votive church) from Schottentor. Photo, 20 May 2023.

Two visits: two months spread over two years.
A thousand kilometres of walking.
Hundreds of historical spots and locations tracked, spotted, and photographed.

It makes sense that out of Vienna’s 23 city districts, I’ll frequent some more than others. The 1st district, or the Innere Stadt, is unavoidable, because that’s where most visitors to the city will congregate. The 2nd (Leopoldstadt) and the 6th (Mariahilf) are districts where I had separate month-long stays. But it’s the 9th district (Alsergrund) into which I wandered through countless times, including tracking my way to the 18th and 19th districts.

Out of many interesting little spots in Alsergrund, I’ve highlighted nine examples from a historical “mélange” of architecture, Jewish culture, medicine, music, and physics. If you’re wondering about the Votivkirche (Votive Church) in the image above, I’ll have more about the church in future posts about Ringstrasse (Ring Road) architecture as well as the architectural works by Heinrich Ferstel.

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Vienna: Wall of Names Holocaust Memorial

Above/featured: Shoah Namensmauern Gedenkstätte 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 giant granite slabs, arranged in the park space as 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.

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

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