Anton's Home Loop

You're standing on the Marko-Feingold-Steg. This bridge used to be called the Makartsteg, named after the Salzburg painter Hans Makart. Since 2018 it carries a different name, and that name carries real weight. Marko Feingold was a Jewish Salzburger and a Holocaust survivor. He made it through four concentration camps: Auschwitz, Neuengamme, Dachau, Buchenwald. He survived all of them. And after that, he didn't stay quiet. For decades he was president of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Salzburg, the Jewish community here. He went into schools, he told his story, he kept memory alive at a time when a lot of people would have preferred silence. He died in 2019, at 106 years old. The fact that this bridge now carries his name isn't something that just happened automatically. It was a choice, and it was the right one. Now look around you. Hundreds of love locks hanging from the railings. Couples engrave their names, clip the lock onto the fence, throw the key into the Salzach. You've probably seen this on bridges all over the world. But here in Salzburg it somehow still fits. Maybe even more so, because the name above this bridge is a reminder of what happens when hate wins instead of love. Take a second. Look down over the railing at the Salzach below, then back up at all those locks. Somewhere between the two, there's more history than it looks like at first glance.