In June, work began on the construction of the Shoah Wall of Names Memorial in Ostarrichi Park in front of the Austrian National Bank. The project was initiated by Kurt Yakov Tutter and the Association for the Construction of a Shoah Wall of Names Memorial.
Kurt Y. Tutter was born in Vienna in 1930. He fled to Belgium with his family in 1939, where he and his younger sister, Rita, survived the Holocaust with the help of a Belgian family. In May 2000, Kurt Y. Tutter founded an initiative group to promote and realize the project of a Wall of Names Memorial. Over the years that followed, prominent Austrians pledged their support for the project. In May 2006, together with the initiative group, the “Association for the erection of a Wall of Names Memorial for the Jewish children, women and men from Austria murdered in the Shoah” was founded.
The new monument covers an area of 2,500 m² and consists of several oval stone walls carrying the engraved names of the approximately 65,000 Austrian Jewish children, women, and men murdered in the Holocaust. The project is being brought to life by the Republic of Austria in cooperation with the federal provinces, the City of Vienna, and the Austrian National Bank. A part of the project costs amounting to around 5.3 million euros was also raised thanks to a fundraising dinner for the Federation of Austrian Industry in September 2018.
The National Fund and the City of Vienna are responsible for the preservation and maintenance of the memorial. Over the past decades, they have established several memorial sites, among them the Shoah Memorial on Vienna’s Judenplatz, and have supported many commemoration and remembrance initiatives.
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