Memorial Room for Holocaust Victims in the City Temple

On November 9, 2002, the anniversary of the November Pogroms of 1938, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (IKG) opened a memorial room in the vestibule of the City Temple at Seitenstettengasse 4 in the 1st district, commemorating the 65,000 Austrian victims of the Shoah who were persecuted, deported, and murdered during National Socialist rule.
The names of 62,400 murdered Jewish women and men, identified by the Documentation Center of the Austrian Resistance, are engraved on large black slate tablets. The tablets are arranged in book form around a column. The broken granite column represents the fate of Jewish women and men in the 20th century. It is continued by a glass column in the shape of a cone. The downward-pointing tip symbolizes the new beginning after the Shoah. The architectural design of the memorial room is by Thomas Feiger. During the memorial ceremony on November 9, 2002, Chief Rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg stated that the memorial site is a "symbolic grave" for all Austrian Jews murdered by the Nazis. It represents the 65,000 individual fates, while the memorial at the Jewish Place symbolizes the totality of the Holocaust.