Commemorating 1938-1945, when the Nazis controlled Austria, I will let Rick Steves' website describe it:
The memorial has four parts. A split white monument, The Gates of Violence, remembers victims of all wars and violence. Standing directly in front of it, you're at the gates of a concentration camp. Then, as you explore the statues, you step into a montage of wartime images: clubs and WWI gas masks, a dying woman birthing a future soldier, victims of cruel medical experimentation, and chained slave laborers sitting on a pedestal of granite cut from the infamous quarry at Mauthausen concentration camp. A hunched-over figure on the ground behind is a Jew forced to scrub anti-Nazi graffiti off a street with a brush.Over 30% of Vienna's 200,000 Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps. I try not to get political in this blog very often, but the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the west today, with BDS, Jeremy Corbyn, American Jews being shot in synagogues and shops, is all quite upsetting to me. I do not understand such scapegoating and hatred.
The monuments are on location of what had been a big apartment building. It was bombed in 1945 and many people died in the basement. So, in a way, it is a double monument.
The weird juxtaposition referenced in the headline comes right around the corner from the monument. We came upon the opera house, with stores across the way brightly light with holiday decorations. It serves as a reminder that we should remember the past, but also that we live in the present, which is shaped by traditions.
So, for a lighter note than the above:
No comments:
Post a Comment