Odds and Ends - Day 12 reformatted. (Osterreichisches Judisches Museum and beyond)

Please excuse the odd placement of this entry at the end of the diary - as the original experienced some technical difficulties, I have reformatted it to make it more readable.

Day 12.

After visiting both the Jewish museums in Vienna on Sunday, I was expecting a similar look at Jewish history of the region. However, the Osterreichisches Judisches Museum is truly a treasure of Austria. The museum has an unassuming exterior, modestly marked by a plaque and Star of David above the door, sits on a quiet alley. On one side, an iron chain grazes the street. This chain, now rusted, once marked the gateway of the Jewish quarter of Eisenstadt – both to delineate its boundaries, and to be used for ceremonial purposes. Historically, Jews were allowed to settle in Eisenstadt after being expelled by Emperor Leopold I.

The entrance to the museum.

The chain which delineates the entrance of the Jewish Quarter.

Where a small but thriving Jewish community once stood for centuries, the events of World War II led residents to either be exiled or put to death. A small synagogue is joined to the museum itself, a beautiful temple overlooking a quiet courtyard.

Johannes in the small synagogue.

However, services are rarely held here. The ten Jewish men it takes to establish a synagogue service simply do not exist in this town any longer: the population was decimated after the Holocaust, never to return.

Banner which once was displayed in the center of the town reads "Jews Unwelcome." It is now housed inside the museum.

The museum itself is extraordinary, passionately directed by Johannes Reiss. His extreme dedication can be seen in the work the museum collects – rarities proudly displayed (such as a recently discovered Torah wimpel of famed Rabbi Akiba.) But where this museum sets itself distinctly apart from similar institutions is found around the corner from the museum building: the old Jewish cemetery, which contains more than a thousand gravestones, the oldest dating back to 1679.

The older Jewish cemetery.

While many of the gravestones have worn due to age, and names are difficult to identify, Johannes has implemented an ingenious project to help families find the relatives buried here. Due to the excellent death records kept by a director in the past, a list of those buried in the old cemetery can be used to identify each specific grave. 

QR code attached to gravestone. Scanning this will retrieve extensive documentation about the grave.

Attaching the codes.

Using a special identifier called a QR code, visitors to the cemetery can scan each individual headstone code with their phones or other internet-connected device, and receive information about the person buried from an online database. While we examined the graves with Johannes, two workers braved the extreme heat, affixing the QR codes to the stones. (note: it was later when I interviewed Johannes that I found out one of these workers was a volunteer, but the other was court-mandated to help. He had been convicted of a hate crime, and part of his community service was to volunteer for the museum. He was not the only court-appointed volunteer to work on the project, there were others as well.) 

I found this particular use of the QR technology quite interesting, as it is a method that has typically seen more usage in Europe and Asia than the USA. An open-use technology (and more or less free to the public,) QR scanners can be easily downloaded to your smart phone. While many US residents typically equate QR code usage with marketing (such as scanning a code on a Coke bottle in order to enter a contest,) the Österreichisches Jüdisches Museum has no interest in selling a branded product. It wants to bring information to relatives of the deceased and others who are interested in the history of this fascinating town.

While QR codes are not a particular new technology (they were first developed in Japan in 1994,) this innovative project allows for a certain freedom that start-of-the-art technologies do not. A QR scanner can be run on many models of older phones, so it is accessible to a broad range of individuals who may not possess wifi on the most recent iPhone model. This intersection of history, memory, and technology is particularly relevant to me, as it is what I am writing my Sociology Honors Thesis about!

To conclude: Connecting graves to the internet!! 

What a fascinating concept. I am filled with inertia! I have a few questions for Johannes that I plan to ask him for my video project, such as:

What gave you this idea to attach QR codes to the gravestones?

Do any other cemeteries you know of do this?

Who provides funding for this project?

How long will it take to fully implement?

Was your intent to use this QR technology so that many people who do not have state of the art cell phones can access the information?

What problems have you run into deploying this project?

Who builds and runs the database?