Jewish life - 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.

After the expulsion of the Jewish people of Krems in the 15th and 17th centuries, the Jewish community only started growing back slowly in the 19th century. In 1894, after years of resistance from the Krems district council, a synagogue was built in Dinstlstraße.

By 1900 there were around 300 Jewish people in Krems. Many of the younger generation of Jewish Kremsers had close ties to Socialist and Communist movements, and as a result were subject to increased surveillance and persecution. In order to bring together a minyan – the ten adult men whose presence is required for a prayer service – the sons of the cantor Samuel Neubauer had to call one-by-one at the Jewish homes and personally invite the inhabitants. On one occasion his sons Bela and Siegfried, who were members of the socialist youth group Red Falcons, protested against this role in the temple by reading out the Communist Manifesto instead of the Torah.

The Zionist club in Eisentürhofgasse was a central space for Jewish life in the city. It was used as a venue for celebrating Purim, New Year’s Eve, birthdays, weddings and leaving parties for individual Krems families as well as for performing plays. In addition to the Neubauer family, another name that often appears in stories of Jewish life is Wolter – previously Wasservogel. The Wolter family invented the apricot liqueur that is now a Krems speciality. The shop at the Steiner Gate, which today sells apricot products, used to be the site of the Neuner underwear shop. This was one of the shops that was looted and destroyed in 1938. Several members of the Neuner family were deported and murdered in camps. Ernst Neuner, one of the shop-owner’s sons, sent food packets to friends and relatives in the Theresienstadt concentration camp between 1943 and 1945, despite the risk of being deported himself.

There has been no institutional Jewish life in Krems since the expulsion and murder of the Jewish people of Krems. Johann Kohn, now deceased, was the only Jewish person from Krems who returned from emigration to the city after the war. The last funerals to take place at the Jewish cemetery, where a total of 177 people have been buried since 1882, took place in 1971. The synagogue was demolished in 1978.