Holocaust Remembrance Day: Salzburg points to Nazi street names
However, it is not the official Salzburg that is behind the campaign, but the association for active commemoration and remembrance culture APC.
In the city of Salzburg everyone is on their name tags on Friday NS-Contaminated streets and squares, information boards with explanatory texts have appeared. However, the official Salzburg is not behind the action: the “Association for active commemoration and remembrance culture APC (Alpine Peace Crossing)” wants to remind people that, unlike in Graz or Linz, for example, not a single one in the city was named after high-ranking National Socialists or system profiteers street was renamed.
On today’s International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust, politicians across the country would again practice expressions of dismay, the association announced in a press release. At the same time, people with a National Socialist past continue to be publicly honored in Salzburg. “We consider this situation to be intolerable,” says the letter on the campaign. The purpose of the notice boards is to make the extent of this honoring of “Nazi victims” visible, at least today. “We call on city politicians to finally take on their social responsibility.”
For three years, a commission of historians in the city of Salzburg had worked through the roles of 66 “brown” street name sponsors and presented a 1,100-page final report in June 2021. In the case of 13 people, the entanglements with the Nazi regime were so serious that politicians should also consider renaming them, the commission included. In December 2021, the municipal council spoke out with the votes of the ÖVP, FPÖ, the one-person list Salz and a NEOS MP – but mostly against renaming. Basic tenor: history should not be erased.
Before Christmas 2022, city politicians then decided on texts for official explanation boards in the 13 cases mentioned. However, that did not go far enough for the Green Citizens’ List: The short texts would not do justice to the role of people closely linked to the NS regime and would play down the NS crimes. The conductor is among the 13 “highly stressed” people Herbert von Karajanthe automobile designer Ferdinand Porschethe sculptor Josef Thorak or the founder of the Salzburg Advent Singing, Tobias Reiser.
(APA)