The "Memorial to the Saints of the Jews of Austria" will be inaugurated today in Vienna, on the 83rd anniversary of the "Kristallnacht" pogrom.
Kurt Jacob Totter, whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, worked tirelessly to bring about the construction of the monument.
Kurt Jacob Totter was almost 8 years old when his homeland, Austria, was voluntarily annexed to the Nazi Reich in 1938.
A few months later, his father, Benjamin, managed to escape to Belgium, where the family managed to reunite - for a short time.
In 1942, the Nazis arrested their parents and sent them to their deaths in Auschwitz.
The mother still managed to hide the two children, and give them precise instructions on what to do next.
A Jewish underground network found refuge for the two children with a Belgian Catholic family, who saved them from deportation and death.
A few years after the end of the war, Kurt Jacob chose to emigrate to Canada, where he rebuilt his life as an artist, and where he lives to this day.
The synagogue on Passanstrasse in Berlin after the events of Kristallnacht, 1938, Photo: From Wikipedia
More than 20 years ago, he read about a proposal made by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal to the Vienna City Council to erect a memorial with the names of the 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The response was then: "The idea is good, but can not be carried out because we do not have all the names." "It was an excuse because they did not want to erect the monument," Kurt Yaakov told Israel Today, adding: "All Austrian parties had the same approach to the matter. 600,000 Austrians from the Nazi party survived the war. Only a few were lightly punished, and all "I was re-absorbed in society. I said to myself: 'At the beginning of my life the Austrians told me where to go, now it was my turn to show them where to go.'"
In 2000, Kurt Yaakov founded an association in Vienna, designed to work for the implementation of Wiesenthal's idea.
The task then seemed impossible.
"As long as it was about collecting data on the murdered, in statistics, there was a willingness to help. But to commemorate the names of the murdered, and to make people understand that it was people and not numbers - it was already too much, and would cause a loss of voters in elections. The idea became a full-time job for me, day and night. "
The meeting with the Chancellor winks
Years passed, and nothing happened. Until the formation of the first government headed by Sebastian Kurtz after the 2017 general election. "I wrote to Kurtz and the head of his bureau in January 2018," Totter says excitedly, "in less than 24 hours I received an answer. I arrived in Vienna in March and was told that the Chancellor wanted to meet me. He asked me one interesting question: 'What does this monument mean to you?' I replied: "The Nazi Austrians have graves that their families can visit. My sister and I lost our parents, who turned to ashes and smoke. We want a place in our hometown where we can light a candle and pray in their memory. It is our right. Many Jewish families were murdered without anyone being left. "Who will pray for them? When my sister and I come to say Kaddish in memory of our parents, we will also light a candle in memory of those who have no one to pray for." It touched his heart.
The personal involvement of former Chancellor Kurtz made it possible to obtain full funding for the construction of the "Monument to the Saints of Austrian Jewry", or in its popular name - "Walls of Names", which will be celebrated today in Vienna on the 83rd anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom. The extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis and their collaborators.
The Hanukkah ceremony will be attended by Kurt Yaakov Totter and other Austrian Holocaust survivors, heads of Jewish communities from across Europe, senior Austrian government officials and Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai.
The monument will be open and accessible to the general public around the clock, under required security measures.
People standing outside a Jewish-owned store after Kristallnacht, in Germany, in 1938, Photo: AP
"This is an important symbolic gesture," says Oscar Deutsch, head of the Austrian Jewish community.
"Most of the people immortalized in the monument have no grave and tombstone, and they are finally getting the respect they deserve."
He said that despite the government's efforts, there was an increase in the number of antisemitic offenses in Austria - as in other Western European countries.
In the first six months of 2021, 562 antisemitic offenses were recorded, including physical assaults.
"This is double the figure recorded in the same period last year. Antisemitic cancer is on the rise not only in Austria, but in almost all European countries."
