(Vienna, 12 March 2020) With an hour of commemoration at the Memorial of Remembrance, MedUni Vienna joined members of the Jewish community to remember the lecturers and students of the former Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna, who were banished or murdered under Nazi rule.
With this commemorative work carved in stone and cast in metal by Tel Aviv-born artist Dvora Barzilai, who now lives in Vienna, the Medical University of Vienna remembers all those university lecturers who were expelled or murdered, all the students of the former Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna who were forced to emigrate or were killed.
The "Memorial of Remembrance" was jointly unveiled on 13 March 2008 by the then Chief Rabbi Chaim Eisenberg, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Federal Minister Johannes Hahn and the Rector at the time, Wolfgang Schütz.
The sculpture depicts a book from which pages are falling – symbolising the loss suffered when the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty of Vienna were expelled in 1938 – starting on 11 March 1938, nearly two thirds of Viennese doctors (that is 3200 out of 4900) and more than half (54%) of the professors and lecturers from the Medical Faculty were dismissed on "racist" or political grounds or had to resign from the university and were then expelled or subsequently murdered.
Inscription: Wer eine Seele verliert, verliert die ganze Welt. Wer eine Seele rettet, rettet die ganze Welt
[Whoever loses one life loses the entire world. Whoever saves one life saves the entire world.]
Maimonides Mischne Torah Sanhedrin 12.3