„Helf uns lieber Gott …" Zur Entdeckung eines einzigartigen Holocaustdenkmals am Wiener Zentralfriedhof
„Helf uns lieber Gott …" The Discovery of an Exceptional Holocaust Monument on the Central Cemetery in Vienna

Summary/Abstract: This essay recounts a jouney of scholarly discovery in a brief and freely anecdotal form relating to a unique but hitherto almost completely unnoticed Holocaust memorial at Vienna’s Central Cemetery – a rabbinical gravehouse that is covered in ,petitions‘ by Viennese Jews from the period of the Shoah. The essay aims thereby not least of all to showcase the largely neglected and sometimes extremely difficult study of gravestones as historiographic sources. It offers a brief excursion into the Chassidic practice of leaving written petitions at rabbinical graves as an attempt to account for the origins of the ,graffiti‘ at this particular grave house, aiming finally thereby to garner greater public attention for this unique Holocaust memorial as well as for the largely still unrealised potential of Vienna’s Jewish cemeteries to serve as cultural and sociohistorical archives.

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