critic\'s notebook; behind sealed doors, opening up the past

By michael kimmelmanoct.
Surprisingly, almost everyone, including the organizers, has finally completed the Vienna Holocaust memorial.
It was unveiled Wednesday before hundreds of people gathered for a solemn ceremony that included the Austrian president, the mayor, the chief rabbi and the Roman Catholic archbishop.
The monument is a huge concrete box in the middle of Judenplatz, a small Baroque square where a synagogue was burned down during the medieval massacre.
Just as a similar monument in Berlin has not yet been completed, the monument here has become a source of national embarrassment because the building has been delayed for many years.
This delay still seems to make it impossible for the country to understand its role in the murder of Jews.
This monument is opposed in many places.
Predictably, members of the city council of Jorg Haider
The right wing Liberal Party, which gained power in the recent Austrian national elections, did not want it.
But most unexpectedly, there were no Jewish leaders in Vienna.
So, surprisingly, the monument is now even accepted by opponents who have been outspoken.
The project has been extended to include a museum showing the newly excavated remains of the burnt synagogue, as well as the renovation of the Orthodox Jewish center in the square called misachii House.
Even on a placard recently installed in Judenplatz, there was a statement issued by the Archbishop of the city, and Cardinal christoph Schonborn admitted that the church was \"guilty\" in the Nazi era and in previous persecution of Jews \".
What seems destined to fail recently has proved to be one of Europe\'s most complex and touching efforts to recognize Jewish heritage, life and death, and for centuries --
Anti-old historySemitism.
The striking element of the ad is the Holocaust monument, designed by Rachel Whiteread
The young British artist, known as \"sensational\", won an international competition sponsored by the city four years ago. This week Ms.
After all that had happened, her work had met her expectations, which made her look almost shocked.
This is an important new example of the art of public remembrance, which is rare in the proliferation industry of Holocaust remembrance.
Its basic success was a rude disruption in gingerbread square and picturesque traditionsbound capital.
This is something that cannot be ignored now.
Advertising accounts for half of the square. the sculpture is about 12 feet tall, about 24 feet wide, about 33 feet long, and an egg shell --
There are color simple blocks with double doors not open in front.
It means something like an interior.
Out library: its exterior is cut into a row of the same books on the simulated bookshelf, with the spine facing the interior.
The name of the Nazi camp was engraved around the base.
The monument is the size of a large room in a house in the square, a building death mask.
The symbolism is obvious.
No access to the room.
We will never know the contents of the book or their names.
We lost them forever.
This is also a sculpture of public conscience, whose head is flipped: about opening up something that the Austrians want to close to keep their doors closed.
Social Democratic Mayor Michael Haupl said in an interview ahead of Wednesday\'s unveiling that he is happy to be able to complete the unfinished tasks of the German capital.
But he admitted that it had taken Vienna 55 years from the end of the war.
\"It\'s not a happy thing, it\'s an important thing,\" he said . \"
He stressed that the debate over the past four years has forced people here to talk about how and whether they want to deal with the constructive processes of the past.
\"The final result may require reflection during this time,\" agreed Peter marboy, the city\'s cultural affairs commissioner, who played an important role in bringing together different aspects.
On 1994, Simon visenthal publicly complained that Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka was \"against war and fascist\" at a monument in Albertina Presse, Vienna \",
This sculpture is used as a bench.
It was added with barbed wire to make a bad thing worse. Mr.
Visenthal said Vienna needs to set up an appropriate monument for more than 65,000 Austrian Jews killed by the Nazis.
The mayor agreed.
Choice of Judenplatz.
Mozart lived there, when he and his librettist, the son of a Jewish craftsman, Lorenzo dabonte, wrote \"Cosi van tut\" together.
More importantly, at 1421, in a massacre, hundreds of Jews burned themselves in the synagogue instead of being baptized or executed. A 16th-
There is still a century plaque on the square for the baptism of Jesus.
The Latin inscription above commemorates the death of the \"Hebrew dog.
CITY Archaeologists immediately pointed out that the remains of the synagogue may exist.
The excavation began.
Discover the most sacred part of the Beima people or synagogue.
At the same time, nine artists and architects from Europe and the United States were invited to participate in the design of the Memorial Hall, which may include the remains of the competitor\'s hope. Ms.
The proposal that Whiteread did not address the synagogue was made in January 1996.
The city promised to finish in November that year.
But residents of Judenplatz complained that the square would be destroyed.
The monument will be the target of neo. Nazis. It was ugly.
Activists say it\'s about the Holocaust and Austria\'s responsibility for mass murder.
It should not be beautiful.
Then there were opponents of the Jews.
Visenthal said it.
They hated that he did not openly oppose Kurt Waldheim as he did, who is a member of the Austrian conservative party.
Waldheim ran for president.
At the same time, there are Jews who do not want monuments to create trouble.
Others think
The project at Whiteread is a cliché: Jews are the people of the book.
Is the death of Jewish bakers and housewives not as tragic as the death of Jewish intellectuals?
Then Holocaust survivors attacked it as an abstract art;
The Jews did not die in the abstract, they said.
Their aversion to modernism as a language of memory
That\'s okay, madam.
According to contemporary art standards, his work is hardly radical)
In a strange way, they are not
Jewish Austrians who wish not to deal with the 20th-century heritage in any way.
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Opponents suggested that the excavated synagogue should be a memorial hall.
It shows a long history of persecution by Austrian Jews and Jews, and will no longer frame Jews as victims of the Holocaust. Besides, Ms.
The monument to Whiteread will be built above the excavation, claiming that Jewish customs prohibit construction above the synagogue. Mr.
Haidel\'s Liberal Party is on the side of disgruntled residents in the square.
With the increase of Jewish opposition, party members of the municipal government believe there is no reason to resist the Jews and build the Jews.
The question begins: Who is this monument built?
Is this where the Jews mourn? For non-
Shame of Austrian Jews?
Is it a monument to Mr? Wiesenthal?
In fact, the monument was not prepared for the Jews and they did not need it to remember what was going on.
The Viennese must do it for themselves.
This seems to be the MS point of view.
His design is: the Austrian should face the gaps they create in their own society, that is, the gaps in her monument.
But the city cannot build a Holocaust memorial because of Jewish opposition.
Local politicians began to retreat in a hurry.
By the end of 1996, the Memorial Hall had not yet been built.
Most people think it\'s dead because the mayor survived with the new city election, but a more conservative city council took over the election.
It turns out that this prediction is simple. Mr.
Conservative Marboe took over as the city council for culture and made the project his special mission.
Over the next year, he spent months trying to negotiate a solution one by one.
He found that the Jewish custom did not prohibit the construction of monuments above the synagogue, just above Mount Bima. With Ms.
If approved, the memorial can be relocated by 1 m. Problem solved.
The scope of the excavation will be expanded, including a museum about Jews in medieval Vienna and a computer center with information about the killing of Jews in the Holocaust.
Vienna Jews who prefer to dig are harassed than monuments.
The city agreed to renovate the house of misachii, a house of 500 square meters. year-
The old collapsed building behind the monument will enter the excavation through it.
The house was occupied by an Orthodox Zionist organization with a synagogue and a children\'s center.
This expanded the program to include not only the history of Jews, but also the current Jewish life in Vienna.
Even residents of Judenplatz got something.
The square was packed with cars before and has now become a pedestrian area.
The construction cost of a $1 million monument has risen to $10 million.
Free Party members of the municipal government complain about costs, passed federal elections last fall
Haidel\'s party entered the national government.
But the cost has risen as the project has become more ambitious.
This is a city project, not a federal project, and now has extensive support in Vienna.
An embarrassing monument turned into a citizen opportunity due to long delays.
At the unveiling ceremony, it was widely noted that no one was invited by the federal government.
However, a day ago, the government signed an international agreement to compensate slave workers under Nazi rule. Mr.
Marboe stressed that the most important thing about this monument is: \"It goes beyond contemporary politics.
In addition to the consideration of the parties, this is a clear commitment of the city center and we are sending a signal.
We want to remember our own mistakes, our responsibility.
The crowd entered the excavated synagogue and museum for the first time on Wednesday.
Designed by the Vienna construction team András paffy and Christian jabergingen, the museum is a mix of concrete and stainless steel, an echo of the MS
It is not too exaggerated, not too dramatic.
Bring natural light into the double basement to eliminate the pressure.
The underground passage leads to the stairs leading to the excavation area.
Rising is an important psychological mechanism.
The spotlight picked out bimah in an otherwise black room and broke the stone wall of the synagogue.
Like other buildings, rooms are more affected because they are undervalued. Less is more. Ms.
The memorial hall of Whiteread was recorded through the model and drawing of another room.
But his successPalffy and Mr.
Jabornegg was designed to serve monuments and excavations without equating the Holocaust with the Holocaust of the Middle Ages.
Although the two are together, they are separated. No doubt Ms.
With the accumulation of dirt in the city, its work will change.
The original is to be weathered.
Dirt should pick out the vertical stripes of the pages and make the surface clear to make it look more interesting.
But that doesn\'t change the basic impact of her Holocaust memorial.
Jean Baudrillard, a French writer, once talked about \"forgetting that extinction is part of the extinction itself \".
Useful monuments do not solve the problem of history.
But they can express them and keep them alive.
Anything about MS can be a little melodramatic.
In the context of the city\'s architecture, it is a sculpture and a break without feelings.
Magnified by a shocking fact of history, it is also Vienna\'s artistic achievements and civic achievements, where the liquidation of the Nazi past has expired.
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A version of this article was printed on page E00001 of the National edition on October 30, 2000 with the title: the reviewer\'s Notebook;
Open the past after the sealed door.