destruction - Krems macht Geschichte

Introduction

KremsMachtGeschichte invites you to learn about and engage with the history of National Socialism in Krems. As you move through the city you connect various historical sites with each other. A simple stroll creates a personal narrative that brings the places, themes and histories into the present and enables you to keep the past alive in your critical memory.

What does it mean to “make history”? In 1938 Krems became the capital of the Gau, or Nazi administrative district, of “Lower Danube”. This was a time when Krems was making history, but history of a kind many would like to forget today. Today, when we remember, when we name perpetrators and tell the stories of victims, when we make resistance visible and point out continuities, we’re participating in the writing of history in our society. History isn’t just written in schoolbooks and by historians and at universities; it’s continually being produced by our everyday actions. History happens in the here and now.

24 historical sites, marked by green pennants, form the stations of the KremsMachtGeschichte tours. Every site stands for a different event that has something to tell us about destruction, persecution and crime, as well as about responsibility, solidarity and resistance. Some roads lead to memorials that glorify the past and that today need some historical correction. Prominent positions in the cityscape are taken up by the court and the prison, places where Nazi violence was once inflicted but that today contribute to the functioning of democracy. Many sites of past events are unrecognisable as such today; only through your imagination can they come back to life.

The information about each place can be called up with any smartphone by using the QR codes on the pennants. Texts and images can also be found in the catalogue which is displayed at various places in the city. By taking a walk through the city, you’re already making some history. En route from site to site, the historical picture gradually becomes more intricate. Common themes emerge, each of which groups the sites in a new way and connects them with our contemporary world. The themes include “on Jewish life”, “on resistance”, “on persecution and punishment” and “on remembering”. The short texts under these titles give some initial ideas that you can question and add your own stories to on the empty pages of the catalogue.

Streets, buildings, towns are storage vessels for history and for stories. If we let them decay or even demolish them, we are deleting the traces of our own history. From time to time that may be in someone’s political interests. Immediately after seizing power in Austria in 1938, the National Socialists destroyed a monument that commemorated a terror attack committed by SA men against Austrofascist auxiliary police officers in Alauntal near Krems. The destruction of historical artefacts is symptomatic of a society’s consciousness of history.

The synagogue in Krems had survived the pogrom of November 1938, cynically dubbed “the night of broken glass” by the Nazis, and the Allied bombings of 1945. After the war it was handed back to the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG), which sold the building in the 1970s. In 1976 the city authorised its demolition. Today, a betting shop stands on the site of the temple.

In 1938 Krems became the “Gau capital” of Lower Danube. However, it lacked a venue for large gatherings, which was needed for its new role. Before the end of the year there were plans for a hall building as an extension to the Brauhof inn. The Brauhof hall was opened two years later. It served as a venue for concerts and plays. But the main purpose of the hall was to host large gatherings of people who could be turned into obedient followers of the regime by the staging of emotionally manipulative, theatrical events.

The few surviving photos show a stage decorated with a swastika, flags waving, a jubilant crowd with raised arms. When the Brauhof hall was torn down to make way for a shopping centre in 1993, these traces too were erased.