Sunday, November 10, 2013

Plaques of Remembrance

Today Vienna commemorates the 75th anniversary of the November Pogrom, which in Vienna took place from 6 a.m. to around 4 p.m. The pogrom against Jews throughout the Third Reich was carried out by SA paramilitary forces and non-Jewish civilians. In Vienna 42 synagogues and houses of prayer were destroyed, Jewish apartments and shops were plundered and confiscated and 6.547 Jews were arrested, 4.000 of them were deported to the concentration camp DachauThe November Pogrom changed the nature of persecution of the Jewish population from economic, political, and social to physical with beatings, incarceration, and murder; the event is often referred to as the beginning of the Holocaust.
Walking the streets in the second district, the former Jewish quarter, but also in other districts, you can see plaques on buildings or on the pavement which commemorate the Jews who had lived there. Indicated are the names, the dates of birth, the dates of deportation and the dates of their death.

1 comment:

  1. A fitting marking of the day.

    The lead up to that war, and the war itself, showed us just how evil evil can really be.

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