Austria inaugurates monument dedicated to Holocaust victims
Vienna, Nov 9 (EFE).- Austria on Tuesday inaugurated a monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust that includes the names of over 64,000 Austrian Jews who were killed by the Nazis.
The Shoah Walls of Names’ inauguration coincides with the 83rd anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass massacre, the point of radicalization of the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich.
The monument, which surrounds the Ostarrichi park, comprises 160 granite blocks on which are engraved the names of the 64,440 Jews of all ages killed by the Nazis.
“With this wall, we avoid forgetting their names and their stories,” the Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said during the inauguration ceremony.
“We give them back their name, their individuality and, with it, part of their dignity, and a place in their country. All that was taken from them without mercy,” he added.
Kurt Yakov Tutter, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who lost his parents during the war, has been pushing for the monument to be built for over two decades.
“This memorial is not about my family, but about the memory of forgotten people,” he said during the event.
“When the Austrians come here they will be able to read each name and ask themselves: Who was this person?”
The monument, however, drew criticism from historians over its irrelevant location, not including all the names of all the victims of Nazi persecution and for its late inauguration, more than 75 years after the end of World War II. EFE
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