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Last week, on "National Day of Remembrance Against Violence and Racism" and as part of a history project throughout Austrian Schools, 80 000 white roses were placed at sites throughout Austria where Holocaust victims used to live.
I went to St. Stephan's Square the night before where the roses were first assembled to form a memorial and later tagged with their names and addresses before they were carried to the places where the Austrian Holocaust victims used to live. The 80 000 roses project grew out of a history-project in Austrian schools: Students research with their teachers the life stories of victims and survivors of the NS-Regime in Austria. *)
On the morning of May 6 I found two of those roses at the portal of my apartment building. (I have done some research in the meantime: Those two roses are meant to remember a husband and wife who managed to leave Austria in 1939. According to a relative, the wife died in the Seventies.)
*) For more information about this project at "A Letter to the Stars" and/or to this newspaper article in the Austrian newspaper “Die Presse”: Blumen der Erinnerung.
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This is an amazing project. How beautiful too. I remember the 1996 celebrations in the Jewish Quarter.
ReplyDeleteThis month in Wellington, the children from the Jewish primary school opened their exhibition of 1.5 million buttons, one for every child who died during the Shoah. Also very moving.