We welcome you at the web-page of the society Lead Niskor. This part of the web-page wants to inform you about the aim of our society. You can read about some basic facts about the society and get to know why it was founded.
Society for commemoration of the expelled and murdered Austrian Jews
Date of Registration: July 25th 2002
Approved by Sicherheitsdirektion für das Bundesland Niederösterreich (Department of Homeland Security of Lower Austria)
The society’s field of interest covers all of Austria.
The society’s aim is not a gain of wealth, but the sole remembrance of the expelled and murdered Austrian Jews.
Aims of the society:
Erection of memorial sights and initiation of commemorative activities
Supportive actions regarding projects, which aim at informing the youth about the Shoah and the history of the vanished Jewish communities
Lectures and oragnization of field-trips to the remains of the Jewish communities on the Austrian-Czech border-line
Historical Research
Up-keeping the Jewish graveyard in Mistelbach
According to the bylaws of the society, there are no charges for membership or becoming a member. We are thankful for the interest of everybody who supports our aims by becoming a member. It is the number of our members that underlines the public interest of our society and its aims.
On June 19th 2005 the dedication of the memorial for the vanished Jewish community of Laa an der Thaya took place in front of the former synagogue at Burgplatz 1.
The first steps leading to this event were already taken more than a decade ago. When the then 16 year old Magdalena Muellner started to contact members of the vanished Jewish community in 1991, it became soon too clear how hard it was for the survivors that there was nothing in Laa to commemorate their relatives, who had been part of the town for so many years. At first we came up with all kind of ideas, but none of these were to be realized. For example, there were hopes that it could be possible to start a small museum in the first floor of the privately owned building, or to put up a commemorative plate next to the former entrance of the synagogue. It soon became obvious that such a project was more than single persons could handle. So the Society “Lead Niskor - Verein zum Gedenken an die vertrieben und ermordeten österreichischen Juden" was founded.
The project became much more concrete when the society made a request to the town governemten in Laa an der Thaya, in which it asked for the permission to errect a memorial on land owned by the town-community. Only after this request was treated positively we were able to consider a closer look at planning the project. In March 2004 we asked Uri Yokel, the son of a former member of the Jewish community of Laa, who has a well-known architect bureau in Maryland - USA, if he could make a sketch. He accepted, what made us very happy. In July of the same year Uri Yokel and his father were in Laa to discuss the details with the stonecutter Mr. Thornton.
There are several reasons why granite was choosen for the material of the memorial. It is a very hard stone and therefore it can grant that the memorial will remain for a long time. We conciously picked granite from the area in Upper Austria (Muehlviertel), where the concentration camp Mauthausen was located. The prisoners had to do slave-labour there, cutting the granite, which often ended fatally for them. Choosing granite from there wants to commemorate this fact.
The costs for the memorial were fully covered by private donations to the Society. If you want to support our project, your are welcome to make a donation to our society’s banking account.
Franz Müllner
(Chairman)
Web page was created with Mobirise