Movie Project

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On August 12th, our class visited the small town of Eisenstadt. Once a vibrant hub of Jewish culture and community, the catastrophic events of World War II decimated the Jewish population. Today, few Jews remain in the area. Despite this, Eisenstadt is now home to the Osterreichisches Judisches Museum (The Jewish Museum of Austria.) In the area of town where the Jewish section of town once stood, a rich historical legacy is present. Around the corner from the Museum, the Older Jewish cemetery resides. Containing 1085 graves of historical and genealogical significance, the oldest of which dates back to 1679.

However, these remarkable gravestones have begun to wear from time, becoming more and more difficult to decipher over the years. Enter Johannes Reiss, the devoted director of the museum, who had a plan to rescue and archive the information that the cemetery held. Using a remarkable mesh of QR-code technology and groundbreaking innovation, he embarked on a project that would allow historians, genealogists, and relatives to access the information digitally.

The following video took place on August 25th, where I interviewed Johannes about his project. We had just spent a delightful day in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof, where Johannes and Traude had taken us on an extensive tour of the old Jewish section of the cemetery. We discuss the idea and implementation behind the project, as well as funding, responsibility to the dead, and more.





For more information on this extensive project, please visit the Blog at OJM.at, where relevant entries have been translated into English. Johannes has published extensive information about the identification of Hebrew graves, as well as links to other helpful resources. 

Help, I do not speak Hebrew!



(Enormous thanks to Hether Ludwick, Kathy Stuart, Johannes Reiss, Traude Triebel, and Fili!)

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