Judenplatz
Two sculptural works, a carved relief and several inscribed texts are located around the square that all have subject matter relating to Jewish history.
Created by British artist Rachel Whiteread, the memorial is a reinforced concrete cube resembling a library with its volumes turned inside out.
[7] The few Jews still living in freedom took refuge in the Or-Sarua Synagoge at Judenplatz, in what would become a three-day siege, through hunger and thirst, leading to a collective suicide,[8] A contemporary chronicle exists, entitled the "Wiener Geserah", translated from German and Hebrew as the "Viennese Decree".
[9] At the command of Duke Albrecht V, the approximately two hundred remaining survivors of the Jewish community were accused of crimes such as dealing arms to the Hussites[7] and host desecration[9] and on 12 March 1421 were led to the pyre at the so-called goose pasture (Gänseweide) in Erdberg and burned alive.
[10] In the middle of the northern end of the square, the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial stands for the Austrian Jewish victims of the Shoah, made by the English artist Rachel Whiteread.
The memorial stands in close relation with the exhibition of the Holocaust that is installed in the neighboring Misrachi-Haus, where the names and data of 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews are documented and accessible through computer terminals.
[13] Excavations were undertaken to establish the Memorial from July 1995 to November 1998; these are considered the most important urban archaeological investigations in Vienna.
[14] Uncovered on the eastern half of the square were quarrystone walls, a well and cellars of a whole block from the time of a medieval synagogue.
Under the square archaeologists found, in 1995, the foundation walls of one of Europe's biggest medieval synagogues and exposed them.
In addition to the archaeological findings, exhibitions by a branch of the Jewish Museum Vienna would document Jewish life in the Middle Ages as well as the data base produced by the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance with the names and fates of Austrian Holocaust victims.
[11] In the center of the southern end of the square is the monument to the German poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing created by Siegfried Charoux (1896-1967).
Lessing's "Ringparabel" in the drama "Nathan der Weise" is considered a key text of the Enlightenment and helped in the formulation of the idea of tolerance.
After 1749, the remaining lots of the block were bought up and Matthias Gerl was put in charge of the expansion of the palace from 1751 to 1754, symmetrically doubling the construction westward.
The façade on Judenplatz was originally the back of the building, only since changes in the 20th century has the main entrance gate been found there.
[20] The female figures over the gates of this building represent the Cardinal virtues (moderation, wisdom, justice and bravery), and above are the coats of arms of Bohemia and Austria.
