Judenplatz and the Nameless Library
Why is it significant?
In the middle of this calm, elegant square stands a block of pale concrete, closed and windowless. Walk up to it and look closely at its walls: they are made of books, row upon row, but turned inside out, with the spines facing inwards so that no title can ever be read.
Key Facts
| Place | Judenplatz and the Nameless Library |
|---|---|
| Address | Judenplatz, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21160, 16.36970 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna's Old Town Lanes: Stephansdom, Roman Stones and Medieval Legends |
| Generated | Generated |
In the middle of this calm, elegant square stands a block of pale concrete, closed and windowless. Walk up to it and look closely at its walls: they are made of books, row upon row, but turned inside out, with the spines facing inwards so that no title can ever be read. The double doors have no handles. They do not open.
This is the memorial to the Austrian Jews murdered in the Holocaust, designed by the British artist Rachel Whiteread and unveiled in October 2000. Around its base are engraved the names of the places where they were killed, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maly Trostinec and many more. About sixty-five thousand Austrian Jews were murdered. The library is nameless because so many of the lives, and the books those lives would have written, were simply erased.
The memorial stands on top of an older story. In the Middle Ages this square was the centre of Vienna's Jewish quarter, with a synagogue, a school and the homes of a flourishing community. In 1420 and 1421 Duke Albrecht V had the community destroyed: many were expelled or forcibly baptised, members of the community took their own lives in the synagogue, and in March 1421 around two hundred people were burned at the stake outside the city walls.
Archaeologists found the foundations of that synagogue right under your feet in the 1990s, and they can be visited from the small museum on the square. Now look up at the house called Zum großen Jordan, at the corner. A carved relief with a Latin inscription still celebrates the burning of 1421 as a cleansing of the city. It has never been removed; instead, a plaque beside it answers it.
The bronze statue on the square is the German writer Lessing, author of a famous play pleading for tolerance between Christians, Jews and Muslims. The Nazis melted down the first version, and the one you see is a replacement. Now make your way east along Wipplingerstraße, past the Old City Hall, to Hoher Markt.