It is the oldest article on this www-page. Magdalena Müllner won a national writing competition with it (competition by the youth-program „X-Large“ of the Austrian National TV and the magazine „Jüdisches Echo“).
Living with Lies (Translation)
Dear reader, I would like to tell you a true story about a great lie. A great lie almost powerful enough to erase all memory of 26 families from their community.
Today everyone is aware of the Holocaust. The events of 50 years ago, are -- or should be -- known to us all. We know that all this took place in our country and no reasonable person deny what occured in Mauthausen and all the other camps. But from where did these millions come? If asked, the average Austrian might answer, "From Poland or from large cities like Vienna." Does this conception reflect reality?
Let me return to the story I'd like to relate. This story takes place in Laa, a small town on the river Thaya in the northern most part of lower Austria, located directly on the Czechoslovakian border. The people there are of the charming sort, which can frequently be found in the wine quarter. There is a tendency to reject aliens when it comes to Czechs and Poles, who have been passing the town since the opening of the border, but not of the open and aggressive kind. No one would guess that there was something hidden, unknown to those born after 1938. A lie has been spread here for decades. People used to say: „Jews? No, there haven’t been any Jews in our city!“ What a tremendous lie! Those spreading the lie almost succeeded in keeping their version of history live as long as nobody would be around to tell the truth, to tell about the 2 Jewish families that had lived here until 1938, known by everybody in town. „Everybody knew them and everybody bought at their stores“, that’s what many say after deciding to end their silence. There even has been a synagogue and a rabbi. The Jews were well-respected citizens - nevertheless this lie was spread.
I bet that 80 percent of the people living in Laa today don’t have a doubt about this part of the past of their hometown. How should they know about it? This lie was spread in a covering way. There are also just two written documentations (of about 3 or 4 lines in books from the turn of the century), which mention the Jewish community of Laa. The historic facts from those books are also far from charming, since they tell about the two pogroms of 1294 and 1337. In our times there almost would have been a twofold murder: through denying and forgetting.
The people deciding to talk are partly afraid. One should think that one can say just anything in our democracy without being afraid. But I have learned that this is not true. When a woman aged about 65 was ready to remember, she would ask me to switch off the recorder before telling that a farmer’s wife from a remote farm, who wanted to buy at a Jewish store, was dragged trough Laa with a poster around her neck. What was written on it? Even now she is not courageous to tell. This did not just happen in Vienna, it also happened in Laa. And still: „No, there haven’t been any Jews here!“ Nazis also forced Jews in Laa to clean the streets. I can’t say much about it at this point, but it seems that some kind of acid was mixed with the water. Is that the reason for this lie?
The relations to Christians were, as it seems, always of a friendly kind. The children went to school together, the farmers sold their harvest to the Jewish merchants and „if you wanted to have something particularly nice, you went to the Jewish merchant and paid for it slowly bit by bit“. I even heard of two Jewish-Christian weddings by now.
Last week I have found some graves at the Jewish graveyard in Mistelbach, where some of „my people“ (as I have started to tell them, since no living soul cares for them but me) have found eternal rest. Nobody can describe the feeling, when one finds the names written in stone, of whom one had no written proof yet. I can’t describe this feeling: I would have liked to embrace each and every one of them.
It’s not much at that point that I could bring to light from the darkness of history. My knowledge seems much more complete than it is. There are so many things I will never be able to uncover. But I will do my best because I cannot hear this lie any longer.