Students in small Austrian town sing message of peace
Students at grammar school named after Holocaust survivor Herta Reich send a musical message to Israel in YouTube video
Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel
As Israel is mourning the loss of many lives amid the ongoing war ignited by Hamas terrorists’ devastating assault on the country, a grammar school in a small town in Austria has come together to send a message of peace and solidarity to those affected by the conflict.
Students and teachers of the Herta Reich Gymnasium und Realgymnasium in Mürzzuschlag during the onset of the war in recent days rehearsed the Hebrew song Hevenu Shalom Aleichem — we bring peace to you — and prepared a YouTube video to send out the message of peace. Mürzzuschlag has around 8,000 inhabitants and is located in the federal state of Styria in Austria.
The grammar school was named after Austrian Jew Herta Reich, who was born in Mürzzuschlag, and had to flee the country around 1938 with the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany. Reich left Vienna with around 1,000 Austrian Jews on Danube ships to escape the Nazi regime and, after a lengthy and adventurous escape over a period of six years, reached then-Palestine with her husband in 1944.
The two were among the very few who managed to survive during their courageous and heroic escape, which took them through Yugoslavia, Italy and Egypt to Palestine.
Not least because of the historical awareness, it was very important to the more than 450 students of the Herta Reich Gymnasium to set an example for peace and tolerance and to send a musical message to Israel.
“We have been talking to our students about the war and what is happening is incomprehensible to us,” Prof. Michael Rath, director of the Herta Reich Gymnasium, told The Times of Israel. “We have close ties with Herta Reich’s son Ronny who lives in Israel and visits us every year to meet with our students and tell them about his mother’s escape and her time living in Mürzzuschlag.”
“With this song, we are also expressing our bond and our message of peace to Ronny who is in Israel and to all the affected families by the current conflict,” he said.
Rath added that the grammar school has always stood for tolerance and peace because of its name alone.
The Times of Israel Community.