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Vienna street named after Wiesenthal

Updated: 03/Nov/2006 13:15

Wiesenthal Vienna Street and the Albertinaplatz Monument

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VIENNA (EJP)--- The Vienna city council decided last month to rename a street in the city’s old Jewish quarter in memory of the late Nazi-hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, the Juedische Allgemeine (JAZ) weekly reported. The city’s Jewish community initiated the project to honour Wiesenthal who died late last year.

All political parties represented in the city legislature voted in favour of the initiative except for the right wing FPO party of the controversial politician Joerg Haider. Shortly before he died, members of the city’s Green Party had already proposed honouring Wiesenthal with a street name or square.

Historically Jewish area

The city will rename the Ichmanngasse lane into the Simon-Wiesenthal-Gasse. Franz Ichmann’s liability was not that he was a songwriter of typical Viennese music, in the early 20th century, but rather that he was a card-carrying member of the National Socialist Party.

Located in the city’s Leopoldstadt borough, the lane has historically been in the middle of the Austrian capital’s Jewish quarter. According to the JAZ, the property which housed the legendary Hakoah Jewish sporting club was located on the tiny lane.

The property, which was nationalised by the Nazi government, was only recently returned the Jewish community. The community plans on re-establishing the sports and education centre that had once been housed on the grounds there.

It also has plans on erecting a new Jewish retirement home on the adjacent property, JAZ wrote.

Nazi hunter

Wiesenthal, a concentration camp survivor, had made it his life’s goal to capture and bring Nazis that had escaped justice to trial – from wherever in the world where they might have gone underground.

Vienna’s Simon-Wiesenthal-Centre and its subsidiary office in the United States were established as a kind of Interpol base with the purpose of gathering and disseminating information on Nazis that were still at large.

According to the ANA Austrian news agency, the city council, on an initiative of a Green Party member, had proposed renaming the inner-city Albertina Square in honour of Wiesenthal in September of last year. The square is already home to the Memorial Against War and Fascism. However, already at that time, the Jewish community and historians were able to dissuade the city council from renaming the square, as it claimed that Wiesenthal was opposed to the monument which showed an enslaved Jew cleaning the street.

No date has yet been set for the renaming ceremony.

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