Jewish Museum

August 27th

German word of the day is Fussball, which means soccer

The Viennese Jewish Museum was a very interesting look into the way that Vienna remembers its role in the holocaust, which did a good job in some senses but seemed a little bit indirect in other ways. The exhibits from talented jews did a great job at highlighting the value and contributions that the Jewish population has given Viennese culture, and it made their destruction all the more tragic. The exhibit with the holographic Jewish experiences was extremely odd to me at first, but after walking through the exhibit for several minutes the effect of holograms shifting in and out of view created a chilling atmosphere that spoke strongly of the persecution that they have had to endure.

On the first floor of the museum was one of the more avant garde exhibits that I have seen in any museum (save perhaps the inexplicable Haydn Museum), which was a couple dozen sculptures of noses on the wall. They were made by reworking casts that the artist had made of actual noses of Jews, and according to the explanation it was made to challenge the misguided idea of scientific racism. It reminded me strongly of some of the discussions we had in our class about the attempt of the Nazis to create a scientific justification for the institutionalized racism that they supported, and did a good job of showing the folly of such social ignorance. The memory of how the Nazis attempted to find some justification using scientific evidence is very chilling, as we generally associate such barbarity with populations that are not at the fore of what we would consider to be scientific enlightenment. The noses, which varied in size and shape just as greatly as people vary as individuals, it was very hard to imagine that people could really make broad social judgments simply by looking at somebody’s profile. I can never claim that I am completely free of any racial profiling on my own part, but the artist did a very good job at making an eye catching display that makes one consider just how irrational and damaging making such judgments are.

The film clips that addressed anti Semitism and portrayal of Jews in movies were partly moving and partly disturbing. Even in today’s media we accept a certain stereotypes about Jews to an extent, but this display pointed out some of the more troubling portrayals that have been put forth in recent memory. The British mini-series Jesus of Nazareth was made in the late seventies, in a time that I would have thought had a more enlightened view of the political correctness of the portrayal of Jews. Of course any retelling of the Passion story or anything dealing with the life of Jesus is going to be in dangerous territory in terms of anti-Semitism, because of the irreconcilable fact that Jews are considered to be responsible of the torture and death of Jesus (while ignoring the fact that Jesus himself was a Jew). The film examples of anti-Semitism are nothing new for those that pay attention to the stereotypes that are offered up in a more subtle form generally, but it is still troubling to look at the evidence when it is piled up in front of you in such a manner.

The only problem that I might have with the Jewish museum was that it refrained from dealing explicitly with the terrors that Viennese Jews in particular dealt with during the holocaust. It certainly acknowledge the suffering of the Jewish population as a whole, but it fails to truly delve into the atrocities that were dealt out to the Jews during the period of the Third Reich. This is largely congruent with the attitudes that I encountered throughout my stay in Vienna, and I hope that within the next several generations the Viennese will come to grips with a more realistic interpretation of their role in the destruction of their Jews during the Holocaust.