A giant monument symbolizing hatred of war and fascism was unveiled in Vienna’s historic Inner City last week, in icy weather amid heated controversy.
About 2,000 persons braved frigid temperatures, among them Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, Mayor Helmut Zilk of Vienna and several other prominent members of the ruling Socialist Party.
But their coalition partners, the conservative People’s Party, was notably absent. The conservatives ordered their dignitaries not to attend.
One could only guess whether this was only because the sculptor, Alfred Hrdliczka, once belonged to the Communist Party, or because the conservatives, the party of President Kurt Waldheim, were uneasy about such a reminder of the past in the center of old Vienna.
The work fills almost the entire square of the Inner City, behind the Opera House. It consists of four sections.
The first is “Door to Violence,” hewn in marble and granite. Then a bronze figure depicts a Jew forced to clean the cobblestones of Vienna. A third section is a marble statue titled “Orpheus Entering Hades,” the realm of the dead.
A fourth column is engraved with quotations from Austria’s Declaration of Independence of April 1945.
The location of the monument was opposed by many who live in the Inner City and by the conservatives.
They argued that under the square are the remains of several hundred people killed in one of the last U.S. air raids on Vienna in March 1945. After the war, the municipality decreed that no house could be built on the site.
But defenders of the monument said this is only a pretext to isolate reminders of the Nazi era on the fringes of the city, where they would not be noticed by many visitors and tourists.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
