Our last day in Vienna! What a sad statement. I have enjoyed
this way too much to believe it is already coming to an end. On our last day,
we took a very interesting and thought-provoking walking tour of the first,
second and third districts. Our first point of business included walking around
Jewish neighborhoods prior to the war. It was very interesting to see how the
neighborhoods have changed into warehouses and businesses and sixty years ago
families lived there.
Next, we wandered around the three districts looking for
plaques that commemorated the Holocaust and the devastation that occurred. One
of the plaques remembered a school that was opened for only three months for
Jewish children. One building was a holding camp for 300 hundred Jews that
could probably only comfortably hold 100. An apartment used to belong to a
family that was robbed, deported and murdered (can you imagine living there
now?). An art studio used to be a synagogue where Jews came to worship. It is
really hard to imagine the lives of these people that are barely remembered. It
is also hard to imagine living in these places now, knowing what happened. This
is probably why so few things are recorded and commemorated. Who would want to continue on with their
lives knowing awful things happened and so many lives and hearts were broken.
But it still needs to be remembered. It’s the least that we
could do. That’s why it was frustrating to see these tiny little plaques hidden
on the ground, where people will only see them if they are looking.
That’s the most frustrating part. A city filled with so much
history, and you have to look to find
it. To me, that’s absurd. The only way to learn from past mistakes is to
recognize shortcomings. It is plain to see that some of the places we have
visited recently are having a hard time putting these mistakes into words. As
for the rest of us trying to study the culture and the Holocaust, maybe it is
the lack of words that says it all. And maybe it is our responsibility to make
sure something gets done with it.
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