On August 28, 2025, in the Salzburg program cinema The cinema The new film by the Jewish filmmaker Joyce Rohrmoser In cooperation with her colleague Their moses Should celebrate premiere. The film (IKG) Salzburg, supported by the public sector and the Israelite cultural community (IKG), is dedicated to Jewish life in the festival metropolis of Salzburg. An evening with a film screening, presence of the artists and a discussion with the President of the Israelite cultural community for Salzburg, Styria and Carinthia was planned Elie Rosen.
Around three weeks before the premiere, the event was canceled by the cinema operator for “organizational reasons”. She had to go on a business trip, it said. Obviously she is indispensable when her house premieres.
Die Salzburger news Now reported on the indication of Elie Rosen of the case. In a request to the newspaper, the cinema operator exposed itself: one does not do such a presentation “at the present time. The film is important, but it could be shown elsewhere. Your “full performance calendar” does not allow a timely presentation.
Elie Rosen:
“This makes it clear that this is not a logistical problem, but an opportunistic attitude that even dates to stage itself as well -meaning – as if it were a good deed not to let the presentation take place.”
According to Rosen, we are apparently at a point, “some no longer with Jewish issues – and as a result probably no longer with Jews himself – show or even put on want. This is a fatal signal. ” It arouses memories of the Nazi era when Jewish voices and Jewish art systematically excluded, their works were branded as “forbidden films” and “undesirable culture”.
It is particularly shattering that the reporting of the Salzburger news Neither from the city of Salzburg, nor from the state of Salzburg or from the Salzburg cultural scene of any public reaction. “Silence weighs more than the cancellation itself,” said Rosen.
It was not the artists who went public, but the IKG Salzburgwho no longer wanted to accept the silence.
In his famous speech in 1985, Richard von Weizsäcker reminded:
“The silence can be a fault.”
And Helmut Schmidt warned:
“Anyone who sleeps in democracy wakes up in the dictatorship.”
This silence that we experience in Salzburg today is a guilt – a guilt that we believed to have left behind us, and from which we hoped that she would never repeat herself.