Despite the efforts of the nazis for erasing the Hebrew past Europe, through the extermination of millions of Jews and the destruction of their material and cultural heritage, this small museum takes us back to that Vienna infamous and brilliant that one day she was also Jewish, although some are unaware and ignore it.
by Ricardo Angoso
In Vienna the past is always palpable because the entire city is impregnated with a long, extensive and prolix history that is projected in its varied architecture and rich urban physiognomy. This is attested to by its palaces, stately homes, impressive public buildings, impregnable barracks, large and spectacular hotels, beautiful breweries and cafes, exquisite pastry shops, clean and orderly streets that unfold with order and meaning and an endless number of buildings that guarantee its past. imperial and dazzle the visitor.
The same does not happen with the Jewish past because the history of the Jews of Vienna is divided between before 1938 and after, once Nazi Germany has annexed Austria and Hitler triumphantly entered, on March 12 of that year, into the Austrian capital. From that moment on, the most terrible events precipitate like a waterfall and the most sinister period in the history of Austria begins.
In the sadly known as the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht by its name in German, from November 9 to 10, 1938, a total of 42 synagogues in Vienna were destroyed by the Austrian population, due to the deliberate inaction of the authorities. Nazis, who encouraged attacks against the Jews. A few months earlier, the result of a kind of collective delirium that led the Viennese to go into ecstasy before Hitler, the Austrians armed with batons and sticks had forced thousands of Jews to clean the streets of Vienna with their toothbrushes or homemade brooms. On March 23, 1938, the New York Times correspondent in Vienna wrote: “In the first two weeks, the National Socialists have succeeded here in subjecting the Jews to harsher treatment than would have been possible in Germany in the course of several years.”
Despite everything, and as has been happening in other European countries, the city of Vienna has wanted to reconcile with its Jewish past and open a door to the history of a legacy that only remains in the memory of some and in the few images that illustrate what was one of the great Jewish capitals of Central and Eastern Europe.
The Jewish Museum of Vienna opened its doors in 1988 as a private entity under the direction of conductor Christian Cap and as the result of a municipal initiative. Later, this institution was reopened after a remodeling in 1993 and was permanently located in a building that has existed since the Middle Ages. Its current neoclassical style was the work of the Jewish banker Bernhard von Eskeles in 1823, who also named it after the co-founder of the Austrian National Bank. In the XNUMXth century, artists and intellectuals came and went from that place. The museum documents the history of the Jewish people in Vienna, which did not always see peace, as we have explained before.
This Museum, located on Dorotheergasse street, is actually divided into two locations that complement each other because both are very different. While in this one we are reviewing we can observe history and objects from the most recent era of the city, in the one located in Judenplatz square we find a unique place for remembrance: by bringing together the Rachel Whiteread memorial in memory to the victims of the Holocaust in Austria and, on the other hand, the excavations of the medieval synagogue. This place also has an interesting section dedicated to Judaism of the Middle Ages. Medieval past and the darkest present coexist in this place.
THE COLLECTION OF MAX BERGER AND HIS WIFE
Without a doubt, this collection by Max Berger, impressive and very rich in every aspect, is a fundamental part of the Jewish Museum in Vienna. Max Berger was born in Gorlice, Poland, in 1924 and came to Vienna as a displaced person after World War II. As the only survivor of his family, he had to rebuild his life from scratch. He married Trude Berger and became a successful businessman as co-founder of the company Cirobe, which manufactured period furniture. In memory of murdered relatives, he collected Judaica. At first he was one of the few collectors of Jewish ceremonial objects, mainly from Austria-Hungary. For a long time they were part of the center of his apartment at Schottenring 35, where he repeatedly received international celebrities from the world of culture and politics.
In 1984 and 1987, his collection was presented at exhibitions in St. Pölten and at the Vienna Museum, leading to recognition of its value and importance. After his death, the funds were acquired for the newly founded Jewish Museum in the city of Vienna. The approximately 10.000 objects bear impressive testimony to Jewish life in the Danube Monarchy. When his widow Trude Berger died in 2010, he bequeathed numerous additional objects to the museum, which became part of the collection as the “Trude Berger Legacy.”
To conclude, it should be noted that Jewish life in Vienna evaporated forever after the end of the Second World War, in 1945, and in 1951 there were only about 9.000 Jews left living in the entire country. It is estimated that between 60.000 and 70.000 Austrian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust and that just over 130.000 were able to flee between 1938 and January 1941, the year in which the first deportations to the death camps began. Two of the greatest and best-known Viennese exiles were the scientist Sigmund Freud and the writer Stefan Zweig. Freud, consumed by pain, would die in American exile, although without knowing the tragic news that four of his sisters had died in the death camps; and Zweig, seized by terrible hopelessness and without the strength to live, would end up committing suicide along with his wife, in 1942, in the Brazilian city of Petrópolis. The Vienna of yesterday, as he would have related it in one of his great books under this title, Zweig disappeared forever and we only have these slight traces left in this great museum that is worth visiting and knowing.
Address of the Jewish Museum in Vienna:
Dorotheergasse 11, Vienna, Austria, 1010
Some photos of the Museum in a video:
Sources used and consulted:
Cityseeker:
https://cityseeker.com/es/vienna/84995-museo-judio-de-viena
Official pages of Vienna Tourism:
https://www.wien.info/es/ver-y-experimentar/descubrir-viena/viena-judia/el-museo-judio-349308
Wikipedia:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museo_Judio_de_Viena
Yad Vashem photo album of the destruction of Jewish Vienna:
https://www.yadvashem.org/es/stories-from-our-collections/vienna-photo-album.html