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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE
An Online Resource Centre
LIECHTENSTEIN
The Independent Commission of Historians
Holocaust Memorial Day
The World of Ili Kronstein
Franz Roeckle
The Principality of Liechtenstein (German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein) is a small, landlocked country, situated in the Alps with Switzerland to its west and Austria to its east. Because of its location, its policies in many matters, including those relating to Jews, have been influenced by those in neighbouring Switzerland. During the Second World War, Liechtenstein, like Switzerland, accepted some Jewish refugees, while others were turned away.
Today, Liechtenstein thrives as a winter sports resort and as a tax haven. The tiny Jewish community in the Principality, consisting of fewer than 20 people, does not maintain any formal institutions
(source:
www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51564.htm, accessed May 2007).
In 2001 the Liechtenstein Government appointed an independent commission to investigate questions concerning the role of the Principality in the Second World War. The Independent Commission of Historians was chaired by Peter Geiger and included historians from Liechtenstein, Israel, Austria and Switzerland. Parliament gave some 3.5 million Swiss francs in funding for the Commission, which presented its results to the public in April 2005 and published them in September 2005.
Liechtenstein has observed Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January every year since 2003. The text of Prime Minister Otmar Hasler's speech on Holocaust Memorial Day 2006 is online at:
www.liechtenstein.li/en/pdf-fl-news-rede-regierung-holocaust-gedenkstunde-27012006.pdf
In 2005 the Liechtenstein National Museum in Vaduz mounted a special exhibition, 'The World of Ili Kronstein' (Die Welt der Ili Kronstein) about a Jewish artist who emigrated to Liechtenstein from Vienna during the Holocaust. In 1938, after weeks in a Gestapo prison, Kronstein fled to Liechtenstein with her two daughters, where her husband Robert, who managed the Franziskus pharmacy in Vaduz, was waiting. She spent only a few months in Vaduz before leaving her husband and family to start a new life near Nice and devote herself to her art. The Liechtenstein National Museum dedicated the exhibition to the family and to all refugees of the period who came to Liechtenstein or who were refused entry. The exhibition was a collaboration with the Vienna Jewish Museum, who lent pictures by the artist, all unsigned and undated but believed to have been created between 1938 and 1943.
The architect Franz Roeckle, who designed the Frankfurter Westend Synagogue in Frankfurt, Germany (1908-1910) and the Synagogue and Jewish Hospital in Offenbach, Germany, was born in Vaduz in 1879 and died there in 1953. Roeckle was also architect in 1924 of the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) in Frankfurt (home of the Frankfurt School) and of various Frankfurt housing projects, as well as the City Hall of Vaduz (1932-33)
(see:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Roeckle; accessed May 2007).
(Updated 8 June 2007)
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