Behind the Headlines Refusing to Forget the Past

A unique series of multi-media events documenting, celebrating and mourning the “Vanished World” of pre-Holocaust European Jewry has been taking place here this month at a time when many Austrians are beginning to confront their country’s anti-Semitic past, and when many Jews are beginning to confront the task of building a viable community for the future.

The three major “Vanished World” events are a photographic exhibit of close to 400 pictures of East European and Austrian Jews; an international film festival with 60 movies, both dramas and documentaries; and an academic symposium bringing together over a dozen scholars to lecture on various aspects of Jewish life during and after the Hapsburg Monarchy.

The “Versunkene Welt” (literally, sunken world) chain of events was the brainchild of Leon Zelman, executive director of the Jewish Welcome Service of the City of Vienna, which he founded in 1980 as a resource center to provide information to residents and visitors about Jewish life. It is under the city’s asupices, with Foreign Minister (and former Vienna Mayor) Leopold Gratz as its honorary president, and the World Jewish Congress as its “support system.”

PURPOSE IN INITIATING ‘VANISHED WORLD’ EVENTS

Zelman was a native of Lodz, liberated at the age of 17 from a subsidiary camp of Mauthausen, the “mother concentration camp” of Austria, located about three hours’ drive from Vienna. Zelman’s purpose in initiating and coordinating the “Vanished World” sequence of events arose out of the conviction that “it was time to speak out.” With next year being the 40th anniversary of the Liberation, Zelman wanted people to understand and “reflect” beforehand on precisely who — and what — were wiped out by the Nazis. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

“We live in the shadow of the concentration camps. It is important to reveal that the people Hitler destroyed as his enemies were not all famous. They were also the old, the poor, children, workers.” It is important too, he continued, that “the memory of these people and their rich culture not be destroyed. We cannot allow Hitler to finish everything.”

The concept for the series of events actually began with Zelman’s idea of a Yiddish film festival to be shown in a small movei theater in Vienna. He discussed the idea with Joachim Riedle, who was working as New York correspondent of “Profil” news-magazine. The idea snowballed into a multi-media event with the support of Gratz, then Vienna’s mayor and other Austrian officials.

The “Vanished World” events were held under the patronage of the president of Austria, Dr. Rudolf Kirchschlager and the WJC. They were timed to co-incide with the observance of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” pogrom of 1938.

Riedl put together the photo exhibit with Hans Peter Hoffman. It includes photos from New York’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research “Image Before My Eyes” collection; Roman Vishniac’s photographs taken before the war to document East European Jewish life whose imminent destruction he foresaw; and pictures of Austrian Jews from a book, “Die Mazzesingel,” (which refers to the Vienna district where Jews lived before the war) compiled by film producer Ruth Beckermann from various Austrian archives. “The main theme in the pictures is the problem of Jewish identity,” Riedl told JTA at the exhibit at the Kunstlerhaus. “The photos were chosen and arranged on an emotional basis. We refrained from long explanations because they must speak for themselves.”

Accompanying the stark black-and-white photos are 28 color portraits of Jews ranging from Golda Meir to Franz Kafka by Andy Warhol; and Jewish religious objects from the private collection of Max Berger. The exhibit, which opened October 30, has been crowded, especially on weekends. Zelman was particularly gratified that 14,000 children and 2,000 soldiers had visited it in a two-week period. Last week a soldier won a free trip to Israel as the 20,000th visitor.

Accompanying the photos is a 242-page large-size catalogue-anthology compiled by Riedl which includes many of the photos plus articles by noted writers such as Martin Buber, Kafka, Lion Feuchtwanger, Milan Kunders, and Arnold Zweig.

SUBJECTS COVERED AT THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

The international symposum, attended at the Vienna City Hall November 19-22 by several hundred people, featured academic papers, presented mainly in German by professors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Oxford, Brandeis and Columbia Universities, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Maryland.

The subjects covered the struggles for Jewish identity, national expression, and various political solutions of the Jewish problem; anti-Semitism in Austria and Vienna; Yiddish language and literature; and Jewish life and culture under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its “successor states.” The symposium was sponsored by the WJC’s Institute for Jewish Affairs of London; and YIVO.

AN EXCITING FILM FESTIVAL

The film festival, which opened November 15 and runs through the 29th, is a potpourri of movies about Jews, the majority from the U.S. They include such well-known films as “The Pawnbroker,” Exodus,” “Hester Street,” and the original “To Be or Not To Be.” Also shown were classic Yiddish films made in Poland and the U.S. before World War II, anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda movies, and dramas from Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Switzerland.

“I went up to the line of people waiting to see the Jewish films, “Zelman told JTA. “I saw faces I didn’t know” — he seems to know everybody in Vienna. He asked the young people why they were going to the films. The answer: “I want to know about Jewish life.”

This, he said, was the aim of the series — to reach out to people, not only to young non-Jews but also to young Jews “so the past will not be forgotten.”

(Tomorrow: Part Two)