How Jewish is Graz?
November 11, 2022
Wiener Zeitung (online), October 27, 2022
German original: https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/kultur/kunst/2166279-Wie-juedisch-ist-Graz.html
An exhibition at the Graz Museum focuses on the diversity of Jewish life.
There is no kosher store and no kosher restaurant in Graz. In contrast to Vienna, where there are shopping facilities, a vital Jewish life and practiced Jewish culture, National Socialism permanently decimated the Jewish community in Graz to such an extent that it is only noticeable if you are interested in it.
A separate exhibition at the Graz Museum, which focuses on Jewish life from the Middle Ages to the present, aims to change that. The exhibition "Jewish Life in Graz" was created at the request of the Jewish Community and in exchange with Jewish people living in Graz or connected to the city. It is an exhibition to be touched, emphasize those responsible, whose wish to bring all Graz schoolchildren in the seventh and eighth grades to the show by summer 2023 can be described as commendably ambitious.
The Dreidel
One of the things you can touch is a dreidel, which can be used to guide you through the first room. The dreidel is a kind of spinning top that comes to rest on one of four sides. Each of these four sides represents a possible answer to questions posed in one of the exhibition rooms. Thus the answer to the question: "How does the kippah stay on the head?" is: "With the fixing band" - or also "by itself". As an instrument of a deliberately dialogical exhibition, the Dreidel also invites visitors to ask their own questions and make their own comments. Joyful knowledge gain is inevitable.
It is important to the exhibition designers, above all curator Martina Zerovnik, not to present Jews passively, but as active agents. Nevertheless, the horror that National Socialism brought upon Jewry cannot be left out. A room with the names of Aryanized businesses written all over its walls is a reminder of the massive injustice committed. However, Jewish history should not be presented as a story of suffering. The Shoah is not the end of Jewish history, according to Gerald Lamprecht of the Center for Jewish Studies, who is responsible for the scientific support of the exhibit. Even though only a few Jews returned to Graz after World War II and restitutions of their property were made difficult or impossible, today there is a diverse, small community of about 100 people.
Exemplary for the relationship between them and the majority society is the Jewish cemetery in the district of Wetzelsdorf, which was recently completely renovated. It is only accessible by appointment. The fear of anti-Semitic vandalism is too great. Jews living in Graz today report on this and other aspects on video screens: "She didn't want to raise her son Jewish, because another Hitler could come," one interviewee says about his mother. Antony Scholz, former vice president of the Styrian religious community, is even more direct: "No Jew in Graz today would walk across Griesplatz wearing a kippa." This reverberates and makes one concerned.
Salvaging Brick
A symbol of confidence and community, on the other hand, is the story of how the new Graz synagogue came to be, which was completed in 2000. After the original building was destroyed in 1938, the bricks were later piled up in a garage. In a wonderful project by Kulturvermittlung Steiermark, after this garage was demolished, over 9,000 bricks were salvaged, cleaned and recycled for the new building together with schoolchildren. This also reverberates, but in a more hopeful manner.
Claudia Beiser, a Graz resident and descendant of the Zerkowitz family of master builders, to whom Graz owes the Margaretenbad, among other things, praises the pleasant collaboration with the curators. Her family is one of those affected by Aryanization and murder and is portrayed in the exhibition. Does she perceive Jewish life in Graz? "Not really." It would be nice if the exhibition at the Graz Museum would help change that permanently.