AUSTRIAN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL BY BRITISH SCULPTOR RACHEL WHITEREAD UNVEILED IN VIENNA

Fifty-five years after the end of the World War II, a memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed by the Nazis was unveiled this fall in Vienna. Designed by British sculptor Rachel Whiteread, the stark, concrete monument is a ghostly pale symbol of a gruesome past.

Whiteread, 37, won the international competition to design the monument in 1995, two years after she won the Turner Prize for Contemporary Art≈the highest award in the British fine-art world≈for ⌠House,■ a full-scale concrete cast of a two-bedroom home in north London. Although there is clear creative continuity between ⌠House■ and the Vienna memorial, that's where the similarity ends.

The construction of the Holocaust memorial has been plagued by delays and controversy. From Vienna's chief rabbi to the Austrian president, almost everybody had an opinion about the memorial's appearance. The result was a five-year struggle from conception to completion.

Located in Judenplatz, the historic square in Vienna's Old Town where Mozart composed Cosi Fan Tutti, Whiteread's memorial is a dramatic interruption in the medieval streetscape. Standing 12 feet high, 24 feet wide, and 33 feet long, it takes the form of an inverted library. The doors do not open and the books' spines face inward on the eggshell-colored minimalist block. Unread book pages represent the countless unlived lives; the names of Nazi camps are inscribed around the block's base.

The construction of the memorial took place against a backdrop of far-right politics. Jorg Haider's Freedom Party has reminded Austria (and the rest of the world) of the threat posed by extreme nationalist politics. The memorial opened amid recriminations and accusations between Austria's political and religious institutions. One of the issues that Whiteread and the city authorities had to overcome was the question of whether building on top of a former synagogue (excavations revealed the remains of a medieval synagogue on the site) is against Jewish law.

Speaking after the October opening, Whiteread said, ⌠It has taken five and a half years of sheer hell to get this done. Would I do it again? I trully dont know.■ Her next project, a transparent cube for a vacant plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, seems certain to be less traumatic.