'Stumbling Block' Memorial in Salzburg
This year's centenary of the Salzburg Festival provided the impetus for the commemoration of those displaced and murdered artists who played a prominent role in the earliest years of the Salzburg Festival before 1938. The Salzburg Festival has gratefully accepted the suggestion of the 'Personenkomitee Stolpersteine' and the Jewish Community to place 28 such 'Stolpersteine' (stumbling blocks) in this prominent location in front of the Haus für Mozart on the Max-Reinhardt Platz. At the commemoration ceremony on August 17, 2020, the Vienna Philharmonic was represented by Chairman Daniel Froschauer and Treasurer Bernhard Hedenborg.
The members of the Vienna Philharmonic whose names are engraved in stone as part of this memorial are Arnold Rosé, Friedrich Buxbaum, Paul Fischer and Julius Stwertka. Alma Rosé, violinist and daughter of the Philharmonic concertmaster Arnold Rosé, who herself died at the concentration camp in Auschwitz, has also been commemorated with a stone bearing her name.
Sixteen members of the Vienna Philharmonic were persecuted, driven into exile and in some cases murdered by the National Socialists. Short biographies of these musicians with an emphasis on the details of their persecution can be found here.