August 10th 2012
Class was pushed back until 4pm today because we were going to have a special guest speaker talk about this experience living through the holocaust. I wanted to make sure that I had enough of a background to understand the presentation and ask good questions, so I decided to take of our free time at the beginning of the day to explore the Jewish museum in hopes of learning more about the experience of the Viennese Jews during the holocaust, so I went out with my roommate Eric, and we managed to make it to the museum by noon.
The Jewish museum sits on the ringstrasse, just a short walk from St. Steven's Cathedral. The museum is in a rather small and unimpressive building, but it had three stories of displays, so there was plenty to see. The exhibits were up set up so that visitors climb to the third floor first, then visit the displays as they descent toward the exit. I found the first exhibit on the first floor to be extremely enjoyable, and I was able to infer a great deal of historical knowledge from investigating it carefully. The exhibit displayed a great deal of Jewish religious artifacts used directly in or associated with Jewish liturgy. The objects on display included gold and sliver candle holders and menorahs, gold and sliver rods used for reading religious text (one can not touch the Torah, so implements are used whenever it must be manipulated), along with varies assortments of decorative jewelry and textiles. I was eager to see these things because I was curious how Jewish liturgical objects compared to the lavishly decorated finery used in Catholic worship, which I have been seeing commonly on display since my arrival in Vienna. The Jewish objects seemed to be comparable in ornateness to medieval Catholic relics, but paled in comparison to Baroque liturgical objects, which tend to be far more ornate and complex in design. While I was examining these things, I wondered how these religious objects might be perceived by the contemporary non-Jewish inhabitants of Vienna. I know that Jewish religious practice was kept out of sight and underground by order of the Hapsburg monarchy, so it might be doubtful that Christians would have ever seen this objects, as Jewish synagogues were disguised, or prayer houses were often kept in private homes of Jewish residents. At the same time, I wondering if the rumors and prejudices that Jews carried secret stashes of gold could have stemmed from religious artifacts like these. If a Jewish community in Vienna had pooled their money to furnish gold and sliver for a community prayer house in a private citizens home, it's possible the Christians merchants might grow suspicious of large quantities of gold and silver being shipped to one person's private home. This is all just speculation, but I was nonetheless impressed that an underground religion managed to amass such a rich collection of liturgical objects.
Sadly, that speculation was the best history I was able to muster out of the Jewish museum. The last two floors were devoted to modern art exhibits amassed or created by prominent Jew's in Vienna. They touched on subjects such as sexuality through the life cycle, and exhibitionism as art, but nothing was of historical value. However, there was one art piece I enjoyed. It was a stair case made of of electrical speakers that played the sound of someone walking down on each step's speaker. As I stood at the foot of the display and herd the sound of boots walking forcefully down wooden stairs I envisioned an S.S. officer patrolling for hidden Jews, as it reminded me of a scene from Ann Frank's diary. I was unable to find out if that was the indeed purpose of the piece, as it was described only in German, but I don't mind not knowing, as I like my person take on the art piece perfectly well.
When I finished with the museum, I still had quite a bit of time before class, so I decided to revisit the national art museum that I visited the day before with Dr. O., before going on to the natural history museum. In the art museum, I took the time to examine the wall paintings, which were done by a very famous Viennese artist name Klimt very earlier into his career. I quickly explored the Greek and Egyptian art museums before briefly exploring the natural science museum's display of animal's and animal fossils. I think I saw a stuffed Tasmanian tiger, an animal that went extinct in the 19th century, on display there!
After the museums, it was time to attend class to here Thomas Frankl describe his experience of the holocaust first hand. Frankl's holocaust story is of particular interest because it is unlike most of the holocaust stories I have seen before, because Frankl was only 9 years old when he Jews were being deported from Vienna. His age makes his personal story rather rare, as most children under the age of 15 were killed upon arriving at a concentration camp, but Frankl was able to survive the holocaust due to the bravery of his mother, who tricked the Nazis into letter her and her family go. Frankl's mother told the Nazi's working on the train platform where the Jewish deportations were organized that she was a roman catholic women looking for her husband, who had been mistaking captured as a Jew. The Nazi believed her, and allowed her to leave the camp with her children, however Frankl's father was deported to a concentration camp.
Frankl went on to describe what it was like living in hiding during the Nazi regime. He explained to our class that his family was first taken in by a convent of nouns, and then latter by a caring christian family that protected the family from Nazis and even civilians that sympathized with the Nazi's cause. Frankl said that his family had to dress him up as a girl during this period because if people saw a boy walking around a convent or in the home of a family that only had daughters, it could tip off a Nazi search party. But this state of terror and hiding did not last forever, as Frankl was eventually found and liberated by Russian soldiers, and his family was able to return to the home they had had before the holocaust, where he was eventually reunited with his father, who survived the holocaust.
I'm very personally thankful to Frankl for sharing this very emotional personal story with our class because I feel like it provided us with a very rare look into the aspects of spying that made the holocaust possible. I could never quite figure out how exactly the Nazi's managed to find and deport so many European Jews. I was always wondering why more Jews were not more successful at hiding, or disguising themselves as Austrians or Germans, especially urban Jewish community like the one in Vienna, who were much more secular and integrated than rural Jewish populations. Frankl's story revealed that people were commonly watching and reporting on each other during this period. Frakl said his father found out that his family was turned in by the janitor who worked in their apartment building, after the man returned and begged for his father's forgiveness. This information leads me to believe that the Austrian population at the time of the holocaust most have been, at least at a very large scale, very compliant in, and aware of what was happening to the Jews. It simply could not have taken place without a large network of people watching and reporting what people were doing. Everyone already knew who was Jewish before Hitler came to power, and reported those families when asked to by the Nazis.
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