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Vienna Day 4
Oy, this day is just as cold, rainy and dreary as yesterday. With little enthusiasm (I honestly must say) we set out for our 4th day of visiting Vienna. We did find the Jewish Museum in Judenplatz. This is a simple museum and very modern. They do NOT focus on the history of Jews in Vienna, instead focusing on the culture and rituals of Jews. The museum tells the story of Jews in Vienna since 1945 - refreshing. I know many Jews are tired of the victim story and need to hear and experience positive, growth stories. The museum hosts a collection of Jewish symbols, dinnerware, synagogue items, etc that were collected by mainly one person, Max Berger, the only one of his family to survive the Shoa by working as a carpenter in Krackow. He had quite a collection of artifacts and the museum - and we - are fortunate to have them. Interestingly, and a little disappointingly, the museum devotes a substantial amount of space to Jews in Hollywood. It has movie clips from a dozen or so movies, but doesn't quite go into detail about why they are here in a museum. For instance, the Harley "like" the motorcycle ridden by Peter Fonda in Easy Rider is here, along with a clip showing Jack Nicholson's soliloquy of peace, intolerance, etc. Other movie clips more obvious, like a clip from Inglorious Bastereds. (I LOVE that movie because it is a fantasy revenge film where a group of mercenaries, both Jew and Non, are able to kill a bunch of Nazis and even Hitler!)
Then we went to the old Synagogue. It was build in 1826 by a prominent architect with the condition that it didn't look like a synagogue, so the outside looks like any other apartment building in the neighborhood. The city recognized that Jews were contributing much to society via music, politics, art and science so were "allowed" to build a place of worship. Famous Jews here include Mahler, Freud, Martin Buber, During this renaissance for Jews, the population rose from 6200 in 1860, to 40,200 in 1870 and, by the turn of the century, it reached 147,000. By 1938, the Jewish population of Vienna peaked at 185,000 members - 10 percent of the population. Then WWII hit. Jews lost most all of their civil liberties as a result of the Nuremburg racial laws. By 1945 only 800 Jews had managed to survive. And the building survived only because the people who lived nearby convinced the Nazi's that because the building was so close to theirs, their home could be destroyed unintentionally.
After this we went to dinner at a non-descript restaurant in Stephanplatz and went home, stopping to take a couple of pix: Otto Wagner designed the old subway entrance at Karlsptatz. Simply beautiful Nouveau design.
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