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social issues & initiatives | by Barbara Sauer | 2010-06
Living MemoryThe historian Barbara Sauer about her journey to Yad Vashem – and into the past: “Touching stories with the mandate to do everything in our power to fight racism which flares up again and again. ‘Never again!’ is the message of every single life story we heard.”Since the 1950s, my family has been living in Servitengasse in Vienna’s 9th district. In March 2005, when my grandmother had just died and I was taking over her flat, the project group “Servitengasse 1938” invited for a meeting. They wanted to extend the search for former inhabitants who had been expelled during the NS regime from one house to the entire street. So I joined the group and later also the research team. It took years of archive work to find out as much as possible about who lived here in 1938, owned houses, ran shops; we reconstructed the life paths of those who were persecuted as Jews. In the meantime a memorial plaque was unveiled, a book was published, a memorial symbol erected. In summer 2010 the results were presented in an exhibition. More and more often we were also addressed by people who wanted to understand about the past of their house, their flat, their family. Since the summer term of 2009 we are doing courses at the education centre Alsergrund under the title “In the archive of memories”, where the participants get the tools of the trade for this kind of research.For some time now, erinnern.at apart from teachers of different types of school has also let one or two scientists participate in their stays in Israel. My colleague Birgit Johler, who led the research project on Servitengasse and edited the book, and myself were allowed to accompany the group to Israel in July 2009. Of course we were a bit anxious: two weeks day and night just with Austrian teachers – and an exceptionally dense programme at that. But the group’s composition was very heterogeneous, which made the intensive togetherness highly interesting and enabled a variegated exchange. The Austrian and Israeli responsible persons’ long-time experience guaranteed a high level of professionality, the well-arranged programme offered various and rich stimuli. Which was also the reason for recurring regret because there was too little time for many things one would have liked to go deeper into some matters, continue conversations, visited even more places worth seeing. The mixture of academic and didactic tutorial units was also well balanced. Although the time was extremely exhausting, I would recommend all those who get the opportunity to take part in such a course. The experience and what we can learn there will not only be of inestimable use for future work but also a great personal enrichment. Highlights of our stay in Israel for all participants were our meetings with survivors which took place at several opportunities in different places. Also, I had a personal stroke of luck, a kind of miracle: At that time I was in the midst of researching for a new project about Austrian lawyers persecuted during the NS regime. Among the survivors we had the chance to meet I also met two relatives of people I was researching on. Almost all of our group had had contact with surviving witnesses before our stay in Yad Vashem. Yet what these people tell never ceases to be moving; for all of us these moments left the most profound impressions. Each of these life stories is a mandate to do everything in our power to fight racism which flares up again and again. “Never again!” is the message of every single life story we heard. Barbara Sauer (born in 1974) studied history and art history. She works as a free-lance historian in Vienna. Among her projects are “Servitengasse 1938” and “Advokaten 1938”. External links: YAD VASHEM
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