Exhibition: "Journey into the unknown"

The exhibition is based on documentary photographic material, selected texts and sparse film material depicting the Holocaust based on the fate of the Jewish community in Graz from 1938 – 1945. Fate destined men and women, children, young and old – to an unimaginable ordeal. This ordeal leads deeper and deeper into the abyss of dehumanization and is retraced in this exhibition. It was an ordeal that led to the almost complete destruction of the formerly flourishing Jewish communities. Against this background it is a special concern of this exhibition to commemorate the many victims of the Shoah. To remember each and every one of them, seventy years after the end of the murderous Nazi rule, here in this Haus der Namen. In this permanent memorial, they will remain in our memory and they will never be forgotten.

Adele and Bertl, two young adults will accompany you on your journey through the exhibition. Bertl, whose escape leads him through three different continents, survived. While Adele´s dream, to escape deportation and death by fleeing to the USA, did not come true. She was murdered in Auschwitz. The example of the Nazi rule and the Holocaust shows us what horrors can become reality when tolerance and acceptance are systematically undermined and destroyed, just because another human being has a different religion, comes from a different place or has other preferences. Therefore, because the very fact that this exhibition shows what terrible consequences occur when tolerance is being silenced and gaged, it also wants to be a memorial and plea for understanding and for building bridges. All this to ensure that what happened between 1938 and 1945 must never ever repeat itself. And so we hope that you, valued visitor of this exhibition, take something with you, something that will encourage you to think and that will resonate and stay with you in one form or another.