Der Standard, December 28, 2019
German Original: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000112708561/gedenken-an-die-juden-von-judenburg
Since Fall of this year, the memorial Two Rings in the Current of Time in the Upper Styrian community of Judenburg commemorates the town’s two wiped-out Jewish communities.
The location is historically significant: on a small, raised stretch of green in Judenburg’s old town, not even a five-minute walk from the main square, stand two massive, elliptical concrete rings. During the Middle Ages, this was the center of the Jewish community. One of the two rings symbolizes the medieval community, which was expelled from the town in 1496. The second concrete ring symbolizes the Jewish community that existed there between the legal equalization of the status of Jews in the Habsburg Empire in the second half of the 19th century until its destruction and extinction in 1938.
Names as Remembrance
Two Rings in the Current of Time is the name of the memorial, which was unveiled in the Fall of 2019. Steel plates are embedded in both rings, they have milled in them the names of both the Jews that could be documented from medieval times, as well as those expelled by the National Socialists.
One has to step into the inside of the rings in order to be able to read the names in the backlight. The lists of names are not exhaustive, only few names are known from the Middle Ages, and not all the victims of the NS killing machine seem to have been documented. Recent research estimates put the number of those victims of NS terror at 47.
Repression and Concealment
It took over seven decades until the 10,000 or so inhabitants of the small city engaged more intensively with the group that gave their city its name and created a visible sign of remembrance. “Historiography has been characterized by the creation of myths, by repression, and by concealment,” says historian Michael Schiestl from the City Museum Judenburg.
The memorial was initiated by a school project in 2014, 2015, and 2016 at two local high schools (a Gymnasium and a Realgymnasium). A remarkable facet of the project was the cooperation with the Jewish Zwi-Perez-Chajez School in Vienna, which included working groups and mutual exchange visits in Vienna and Upper Styria, respectively. The students not only compiled the city’s history together, but also designed sketches and models for the memorial.
Financed by the City
The idea of the two rings was selected. The City of Judenburg financed the project with 50,000 Euro, a decision supported by all factions in the city government. Even the FPÖ voted in favor of the memorial then, it probably would “not have been politically opportune” to oppose the memorial, argues historian Schiestl. The sculptor and musician Clemens Neugebauer then took over production and static of the very heavy piece of art.
Desired Name “Adolfburg”
A particular detail of the city’s historical reappraisal is the name Judenburg itself. The city still carries a name that suddenly became a problem for the National Socialists and their anti-Semitic, racial fanaticism.
It was the Judenburgers themselves who requested a new name right after the Nazi troops’ entry into Austria in March 1938. A petition by the city manager to Adolf Hitler, dated April 3, 1938, requested that the Führer may free Judenburg from its “virtually reviling name.”
As a result, several possibilities for a new name were discussed, among them Adolfsberg. Due to the impact of the war a renaming never materialized.
A Late “Aryanization Attempt”
The last “aryanization attempt,” as city historian Schiestl calls it, happened in the early 1970s. Hobby historians repeatedly published the thesis that the name had nothing to do with Jewish residents, but rather stemmed from a nick name of a member of the Counts of Eppsteiner, who ruled in the area during the 11th century. The thesis has not been empirically validated, however. (Thomas Neuhold, 12-28-2019)
Translation by Hannes Richter