From the Periphery to the Center of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in Vienna*. Issue 3 (1st September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Uhl, Heidemarie
• Is Part Of: Dapim. Volume 30:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 221
• Page End: 242
• Publication Date: 2016-09-01
• Subjects: Seitenstettengasse Synagogue -- Aspang Railway Station Memorial -- Albertinaplatz Memorial -- Judenplatz Memorial -- Rachel Whiteread -- Alfred Hrdlicka; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 940.5318
• DOI: 10.1080/23256249.2016.1257217
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2325-6249

Abstract

Abstract : Holocaust memorials are seismographs of historical consciousness. The topography of commemoration for the more than 66, 000 victims of the Holocaust in the Austrian federal capital Vienna points up the development from exclusion of the Holocaust from Austrian memory to its incorporation: after 1945, the memory of the murdered was an empty space in the public arena. The official state doctrine of Austria as the 'first victim' of National Socialismis mirrored in the landscape of memorials: memorialization centered on resistance to the Nazi regime. The watershed came with the debate on Kurt Waldheim in 1986 when Austria was confrontation with its Austrian Nazi past. The establishment of the Holocaust Memorial on Judenplatz in 2000 symbolizes that the Holocaust had also gravitated to the center of the official culture of memory at the end of the twentieth century in Austria as well as professors at colleges and universities. The present paper will describe the stages in the process extending from the blanking out of Holocaust commemoration to its internalization.