The Preserver of Jewish History
ORF, December 26, 2022
German original: https://noe.orf.at/magazin/stories/3186998/
When the synagogue in St. Pölten was renovated for the first time in the 1980s, the Institute for Jewish History in Austria was founded in the renovated synagogue. Its director is herself an institution: Martha Keil has received several awards for her work.
The synagogue, a symbol of the flourishing Jewish life in St. Pölten before 1938, has been a construction site for weeks. For the second time, a fundamental renovation is on the agenda, which should result in the building becoming a much-visited venue - without giving up its Jewish "soul," Martha Keil emphasizes. She devoted her life to Judaism without being Jewish herself.
"It should remain a memorial and a place of remembrance. Even if people come here to listen to music. It must make those who enter the house think when they see the Torah shrine or the Hebrew characters. Then they automatically ask themselves: where is the Jewish community that prays here? And our task then is to give these people answers," Keil said in an interview with noe.ORF.at.
Task of fighting anti-Semitism
The answer: after the extermination by the Nazis, the Jewish community never returned. The synagogue was an empty shell before the Institute for Jewish History in Austria moved in at the end of the 1980s. Since 2004, this has been headed by Keil, a Viennese cultural historian who has devoted her life to the Jewish people and their culture.
Now 64, as a child she wanted to experience a kibbutz (a rural collective settlement) in Israel, which she followed through with. Nevertheless, she came to study Jewish Studies in Vienna rather by chance. The more she became involved with the people, the more she connected with it: "It was certainly not a religious reason to take up this profession. I'm not Jewish, even if many people think I am, because I know my way around. I am socialized, so to speak, with the people of this nation. And I see it as a socio-political task to fight against anti-Semitism. That's what drives me and will always drive me."
In order that murdered people are not forgotten
But it is by no means only the Shoah that is the focus of her research. If you ask her about her most important research work, she names the role of Jewish women in the Middle Ages. It is a comprehensive body of work, stored in numerous books, but above all in many boxes of research results in her new office in downtown St. Pölten. Because of the restoration, it was moved from the synagogue. Now she works there with eleven employees. Most recently, among other things, on a list of names.
These are the names of those people who were murdered by the National Socialists in Hofamt-Priel (district of Melk) in the last days of the war in 1945. Their bodies were moved to a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten in 1964. Martha Keil’s team researched 228 names and immortalized them on a commemorative plaque: "I cannot bear it when people have no name in memory. Without sound research, remembrance remains hollow in a way, without a basis."
More and more requests for family research
After it was made possible by law for descendants of Jewish expellees to more easily obtain dual citizenship, inquiries to the institute are piling up. Many want to have their Jewish family history researched and documented. Hundreds of inquiries are received annually. The institute is in contact with 300 descendants from all over the world. When one of them comes to Austria, they often visit the Jewish cemetery in St. Pölten.
Then it is Martha Keil who unlocks the cemetery's fence gate. The inscriptions on the approximately 200 gravestones have long since been transcribed and archived. The city will now renovate the cemetery. Even if it is not her own story - Martha Keil is perhaps the most profound connoisseur of the Jewish people and their history in Austria.