Repairs made in Vienna to mutilated street photos of Holocaust survivors have been described as "touching" by artist Luigi Toscano. Vigil keepers, including Muslim and Catholic youths, even showed up with sewing kits.
Image: picture-alliance/APA/L. Huter
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Holocaust survivor portraits attacked in Vienna
The "Lest we forget" exhibition in Vienna shows large photos of Holocaust survivors. After the portraits were repeatedly desecrated, young people started holding vigils around the clock to guard the works.
Image: picture-alliance/APA/R. Schlager
Slashed with knives
The "Lest We Forget" exhibition features 200 photographic portraits of Jewish, Sinti, and Roma people as well as others persecuted under the Nazi regime. The works have been on display in the center of Vienna since early May. During the night following the European elections, unknown assailants attacked some of the images.
Image: picture-alliance/APA/R. Schlager
Horrified organizer
German-Italian photographer and exhibition organizer Luigi Toscano spent over a year meeting with Holocaust survivors living in the US, Germany, Ukraine, Israel, and Russia. After the attacks, he expressed his dismay with a post on Facebook, asking: "Austria, what's wrong with you?"
Image: DW/N. Ismail
Rapid community response
Only a few hours after the crime, several organizations, including Muslim Youth Austria, launched a campaign to repair and protect the series. Volunteers were able to sew the damaged works back together within a few hours.
Image: DW/N. Ismail
Not the first attack
The efforts of the rescue operation are impressive: Now the only traces of the damage that remain are red stitches. But even before this incident, the exhibition had been attacked two times. Two days after the launch, several photos were slashed with a knife but the damage was not as great.
Image: DW/N. Ismail
Around-the-clock vigil
The images, which have been installed in public squares and parks in 13 cities worldwide, will now be guarded around the clock in Vienna. Several Viennese Muslims are attending the night vigils. In the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, they want to do something good for their community. It is also an opportunity to break the fast together.
Image: Asma Aiad
"We stand guard"
Until the exhibition finshes at the end of the month, young Muslims, as well contemporaries from the Catholic Caritas organization and the nesterva artists' collective, want to stay on site to protect the pictures. Mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig (3rd from right) also attended the vigil. He thanked the helpers and spoke of a "beautiful sign of civil society."
Image: DW/N. Ismail
Fighting anti-Semitism
The head of the Young Caritas, Alice Uhl, is torn. On the one hand, she is overwhelmed by the outpouring of assistance but on the other hand, she is ashamed that the portraits were defaced: "The exhibition has never been attacked so often — and damaged so badly — as it has been in Austria. It is unacceptable! It's important to me that we're here together to take a stand against this."
Image: DW/N. Ismail
More and more visitors
At least one good thing has come from the attacks: The exhibition is now attracting more and more visitors because of the vigil guarding it, and the media presence. Toscano is looking ahead to the exhibition's next venues. The series of portraits have gone on display in public spaces in Berlin, Ukraine, and the US.
Image: DW/N. Ismail
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German-Italian artist Luigi Toscano said Tuesday he was "especially touched" by the women who stitched back together the large photos on textile — exhibited along Vienna's Ringstrasse road, but slashed and daubed with swastikas in recent days.
Supporters on Monday said they would stage nightly vigils to protect the works until the exhibit ends next Friday.
Heading to the vigil on Monday night, Vienna's mayor, Michael Ludwig, a Social Democrat (SPÖ), said the slashing of 10 photos on Sunday and seven previous photo defacements were "cowardly" acts that not only targeted Jews but also the "core values of our society."
On Monday, sewing skills were offered by Muslim Youth Austria. The youth organization of the Catholic charity Caritas and an artists' collective said they would stand watch.
Women who came and "stitched the photos back together" had brought relief to what he previously thought had been an impossible situation, said Toscano, an artist-photographer based in Mannheim, Germany.
Toscano said he had contacted some of the survivors whose images were defaced and although shocked they had told him "now more than ever before these portraits need to be shown."
"This is right-wing radicalism," Toscano told the news agency AFP on Monday.
March 1938: Nazi troops parading on RingstrasseImage: Getty Images/Hulton Archive
Vienna's Ringstrasse was used as a parade route by Hitler on March 15, 1938, during Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria.
Shown in 13 locations worldwide
Measuring 2.5 meters (8 feet) by 1.5 meters (5 feet), the all-weather portraits of Holocaust survivors interviewed and photographed by Toscano have so far been shown in 13 countries, including the United States, where, among other US cities, they were exhibited in Washington and at the UN in New York.
One recent exhibition outside San Francisco City Hall had ended without incident, Toscano said. Another, currently on show in Mainz on the banks of the river Rhine was under police guard, he added.
'Deeply worried,' 'assault on us all'
Austria's President Alexander Van der Bellen said Monday the assaults had left him "deeply worried." German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the project's patron, said the Vienna photo defacement amounted to an assault on Jewish life and artistic freedom — "an assault on us all."
Since 2015, Toscano has photographed almost 400 Holocaust survivors all over the world. Many looked directly into the camera, some serious, some smiling. Those displayed show survivors he photographed in Germany, the United States, Ukraine, Israel and Russia.
"We have to keep alive the discussion and analysis of the Holocaust," said Toscano.
