On May 3rd at 11 a.m. on ORF 2, before and after two touching documentaries on the topic
Vienna (OTS) – On Friday, May 3, 2024, the Austrian Parliament will remember the victims of National Socialism with the “Day of Remembrance Against Violence and Racism”. National Council President Wolfgang Sobotka and Federal Council President Margit Göll invite you to the Federal Assembly Hall of Parliament. The theme of this year’s event, which ORF 2 will broadcast at 11 a.m., is “diversity of remembrance”. A central question is: What does remembrance mean today, 79 years after the liberation of the concentration camps?
Is commemoration tied to specific objects or a specific place? Does it take place more quietly or as part of public events? What significance do monuments, rituals or artistic interventions have? In a film – also shot in Mauthausen – representatives of the victims’ groups in Mauthausen have their say. The memorial speech will be given by anti-Semitism researcher and Berlin professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel. The title of the keynote: “’Why the black response of hatred to your existence, Israel’ (Nelly Sachs, 1961). Eruptions of the old hostility towards Jews and the Israeliization of anti-Semitism”. Rebekka Salzer will lead a panel discussion on the topic. National Council President Sobotka and Federal Council President Göll will give speeches. The music comes from exil.arte – Center for Persecuted Music at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
The documentary “Café Schindler – Apple Strudel and Anti-Semitism” introduces the topic at 10:35 a.m. A coffee house has a lot to tell, as does Café Schindler on Innsbruck’s Maria-Theresien-Strasse. Founded in 1922 by Hugo Schindler, Café Schindler soon developed into a trendy meeting place with apple strudel, dancing and live jazz. When the National Socialists invaded in 1938, the heyday was over. The Jewish owners were dispossessed, mistreated and driven out. Meriel Schindler, the granddaughter of the coffee house founder who lives in London as a lawyer and author, tells the story of her Jewish family in a very personal book. Some family members managed to escape, others were murdered in concentration camps. It is also the history of the city of Innsbruck with all its ups and downs.
The successful novel will be staged as a play at the Tyrolean State Theater in April. Teresa Andreae, the designer of the documentary, accompanies Meriel Schindler with a camera team to the locations of the story and the young theater team as they develop the current piece. It’s not about dry history lessons, but about telling stories that get under your skin. You can also enjoy a piece of Schindler apple strudel.
After the broadcast from the Federal Assembly, the documentary “From Death March to Reconciliation” will be on ORF 2 at 12.30 p.m. Marcello Martini was 14 years old when, as a concentration camp prisoner, he had to assemble airplanes in an underground tunnel in Hinterbrühl near Vienna. They were the worst months of his life. It was pure luck that he survived. One of his last wishes was all the more astonishing when he died in 2019 after a long, fulfilling life: part of his ashes should be buried in Hinterbrühl. Of all places, in the country of the perpetrators. After many years, he found good friends in the place where he suffered so much. Ultimately, it was the friendships that made reconciliation possible.