In Vienna, the House of History’s (Haus der Geschichte Österreich) open-air exhibition on the Nazi era makes a stop in Floridsdorf - In Ukraine, about 10,000 Shoah survivors are again confronted with war and extermination.
Wiener Zeitung, April 8, 2022
German original: https://www.wienerzeitung.at/meinung/blogs/juedisch-leben/2143504-Und-wieder-im-Bombenhagel.html
The "Jewish Star", "the Aryanization", the "Final Solution": with the open-air exhibition "The Viennese Model of Radicalization: Austria and the Shoah", the House of History Austria (Haus der Geschichte Österreich) recently marked a new milestone on the Heldenplatz in terms of Austria’s relationship with its Nazi history. The aforementioned side-effects of the National Socialist terror that eventually cost six million people their lives are impressively explained here and even more: the viewer learns that many things were tested out in Vienna that ultimately led to the mass murder of European Jews.
Beginning this week, the exhibit can be seen in Floridsdorf. Close to the train station and the U6 terminal stop, in front of the parish church on Pius-Parsch-Platz, the individual stations have been repositioned. The museum thus comes to the people and perhaps reaches a different audience at this end of the city than would be the case downtown. Last but not least, there are many schools in the area. Perhaps this will encourage a teacher or two to visit with his or her class in the coming weeks - the show will be on display until June 7. Raising awareness can never hurt, and especially not here: for years, hooligans have been running riot in the area between Floridsdorf and Wagramer Strasse with anti-Semitic graffiti.
Exactly there, in Donaustadt, I just came across a relic from the Second World War at Kagraner Platz. Next to the district museum, stones were placed in the open. "Collapse. These stones are meant to commemorate the destruction during the Second World War. They come from the Northwest Railway Bridge blown up on April 9, 1945," a plaque reads. Blown-up bridges, tracks, roads, bombed houses: these are the side effects of war. Of course, they don't just fall from the sky, they are man-made. Today, the Second World War feels far away. Maybe that's why I get so emotional these days every time someone says, "Since the war broke out." Still it takes me a moment to realize, they are talking about now, this war that Vladimir Putin started in Ukraine on February 24.
10,000 Holocaust survivors in Ukraine
There are people, however, for whom the Second World War is not so far away as for us, who came into the world long after 1945. And there are also thousands of people for whom the Nazi terror is not history as it is now presented in Floridsdorf. Especially the Ukrainian Jews were particularly affected by Hitler's murder program: 1.5 million Jews were killed in the country under National Socialism. Of those who were able to flee or otherwise lived to see the end of the war, around 10,000 people are still alive today.
One of these was Boris Romantschenko. The 96-year-old survived the concentration camps Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen. Until recently, he was vice president of the International Committee Buchenwald-Dora. Now the Russian army bombed Kharkiv, hitting his apartment building. Romantschenko died in his apartment. The Shoah survivor was killed as part of a war Putin instigated under the pretext of a "denazification action." Perhaps in 50, 60, 70 years, an open-air exhibition in Kiev will somehow try to explain this absurd and death-filled chapter of recent history to a future generation. From today's perspective, the explanation is not yet clear.
The Claims Conference is now trying to pull out all the stops to ensure that other Holocaust survivors do not suffer the same fate as Romantschenko. It is trying to evacuate the elderly, but this is not easy: many are in need of care, which complicates transport and requires appropriate care at the place of refuge. But many also do not want to leave their homes. One of them is Roman Schwarzmann. The Shoah survivor is still fit and actively organizes the escape from Odessa for other Jews. But he himself wants to stay. He nevertheless finds clear words for what is happening now: "When I was four years old, it was fascist Germany that started the war, today it is fascist Russia." That's what he said this week in a short interview for the TV channel "Welt."
Convoys to Germany
Meanwhile, in Germany today, convoys of Holocaust survivors from Ukraine have been arriving since late March, organized by the Claims Conference in cooperation with other organizations such as the American Jewish Distribution Committee. So far, several dozen people have arrived in Germany this way. It will not be possible to get all 10,000 of those affected out of the country. But if it were possible to save everyone who would like to flee but is not able to do so on their own due to their state of their health, then that would certainly be a great humanitarian success.
The Viennese Jewish community has already thought about this, as IKG Secretary General Benjamin Nägele told me the other day. They are in constant exchange with the Central Council of Jews in Germany. If there is a concrete request that someone wants to be evacuated to Vienna - for example, relatives of the 750 or so younger Jews from Ukraine who have already arrived in Vienna - then efforts will be made to arrange transport and the necessary accommodation in a care facility. But that is precisely the problem here: such places of care are not plentiful, keyword: nursing shortage. But if the worst comes to the worst, Nägele says, everything will be done to find a solution.
This war presents so many cruel facets: the bombing of thousands of people waiting at the Kramatorsk train station, which has now become public, is just one of them. Just now I saw a photo showing abandoned suitcases and baby carriages, with bloodstains on the floor in between. It is pictures like this that burn themselves into collective memory. Photos of people who were liberated from concentration camps are also part of this foundation of collective memory. When liberated people from that time are now killed by the Russian army, it is doubly painful. But also those that survive this war would have wished for a more tranquil retirement, since the ongoing bombing attacks trigger the Shoah survivors.
Tatyana Zhuravliova is one of those who have since been evacuated to Germany. She has been placed in a nursing home in Frankfurt. She told "Euronews" she now felt the same panic she experienced as a little girl when the Nazis flew air raids over her hometown of Odessa. No, no one would wish that on these very old souls who have already been troubled their whole lives.