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The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART TWO)

A vandalized Jewish cemetery in Vienna, Austria, in October 2023. Photo: Screenshot

To read part one of this article, click here.

The Golden Age of Jewish Vienna

In 1848, under the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph, Jews were granted limited civil rights. In 1852, the Jewish community was permitted to establish a legally recognized community, albeit with a temporary status. Finally, in 1867, the Constitutional law created complete equality for all citizens of Austria, including Jews. With their official acceptance and legal recognition as a community, Jews from the Eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, particularly Galicia, Czech, and Hungary, immigrated to Austria.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Jewish refugees from Eastern war regions escaped to Vienna in large numbers. For the first time, thousands of Hassidic Jews and their rebbes moved to Vienna, joining the Oberlander Vien followers of the Chasam Sofer. They assumed they would reside in Vienna’s relative tranquility until the war ended.

Yet, Vienna unexpectedly became a thriving center of Hasidism over those few years. By the time the war ended, the refugees realized Vienna was a far better option than their destroyed hometowns. They began to settle and rebuild their communities in Vienna.

Following World War I, by 1923, the percentage of Jews in Vienna reached its peak at 10.8 percent of the population, making Vienna the third-largest Jewish community in Europe.

Due to its prominent rabbinic residents and community, Vienna would go on to host the first two Knessiah Gedolahs (The Great Congress) of the International Agudath Israel in 1923 and 1929.

Enlightenment Movement In Vienna

During its Golden Age, Vienna also became a center of the “Enlightenment Movement,” which promoted the move toward secularism and decreased Jewish education. Between 1848 and 1938, secular Austrian Jews were prominent in Vienna’s intellectual, cultural, and political life. However, unlike the earlier affluent and influential Viennese Jews, who were very observant, many prominent Jews of this era assimilated or even converted to Christianity.

Assimilated Jews contributed to Vienna’s cultural and scientific achievements. Prominent Jewish physicians and psychologists, including Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Victor Frankl, resided and taught there. Jews were active in music and theater, including Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schonberg, Oscar Straus, Emmerich Kalman, Max Reinhardt, Fritz Kortner, Lily Darvas, and Elisabeth Berner. Writers Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, and Felix Salten became world-renowned for their works.

Theodor Herzl, founder of secular political Zionism, lived and died in Vienna. Many Jews were leaders of the Social Democratic Party. Victor Adler and Otto Bauer, who served as Austrian foreign ministers after World War I, were both Jews.

In the field of medicine, three out of four Austrian Nobel Prize winners in medicine at the time were Jewish. More than half of Austria’s physicians and dentists were Jews, as were more than 60 percent of the lawyers and a substantial number of university teachers.

Yet, despite their success and fame, antisemitism remained a constant in the environment of Austria. As Rabbi Berel Wein, a noted Jewish historian, observed, “Austria was always known for its antisemitism.” And this hatred of Jews would soon rear its ugly head in the most vicious way imaginable.

Two Infamous Antisemites

While Jews were focused on integrating and excelling within Viennese society, a renewal of antisemitism developed. This time it wasn’t religious antisemitism that targeted the Jews for not becoming Christians; it was racial antisemitism, which applied to all Jews, whether their religion mattered to them or not.

Two particularly influential antisemites were Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger.

Georg Ritter von Schönerer was a politician who innovated ideas that Hitler would adopt, such as expelling Jews from his movement, adopting the title Fuehrer and the greeting of Heil. He told his followers that a battle would take place between the Germans and the Jews and that “if we don’t expel the Jews, we Germans will be expelled!” He was jailed after ransacking the office of a Jewish newspaper and attacking their employees. Yet, after his release, he continued to successfully build his Pan-German movement. Twenty-one members of the antisemitic nationalist party, Alldeutsch Parti, were elected to the Austrian Parliament.

Another rabid, influential Austrian antisemite, Karl Lueger, was elected mayor of Vienna five times between 1897 and 1910. At first, Emperor Franz Joseph refused to support him due to his antisemitism, but after Lueger’s fifth reelection, he accepted Lueger’s power. (As an aside, his political success is another indication of how acceptable antisemitism was in Austria.) Lueger blamed the Jews for Vienna’s financial problems and roused crowds with his antisemitic fervor. Interestingly, in private, he still had several Jewish friends. Lueger is said to have responded to questions about this contradiction with the statement, “I decide who is a Jew,” a comment that fits well with Vienna’s overall approach to its Jews historically.

Lueger’s ideas strongly influenced Adolf Hitler, who moved to Vienna in 1906. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler refers to Lueger as one of the personalities who shaped his views about Jews, as well as von Schönerer as discussed above.

The Anschluss

On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria, and Nazi Germany annexed Austria in an event that became known as the Anschluss. That same night, Jewish stores and apartments were pillaged, and Jews were chased into the streets and humiliated, forced to scrub sidewalks, to the cheers of the Austrian observers. Almost immediately, the Nazis carried out the first deportations to Dachau of Jews. This overnight turnaround from successful integrated citizens to a hunted and degraded people, was a complete shock to Austrian Jewry.

By May, the Nuremberg Racial Laws were applied in occupied Austria. Within a short period, the Jews — who, as discussed above, were so prominent and influential in Austria, both politically and professionally — lost their civil liberties. They were expelled from universities, excluded from public service and most professions, and were forced to wear a yellow star. Other decrees followed, banning Jews from public parks, closing Jewish stores, and requiring Jews to take on a first name of Sara or Israel.

All Jewish organizations and institutions were shut down. However, afterward, some organizations were re-opened when the Nazis forced emigration, and the Jewish organizations were to coordinate that. Adolf Eichmann worked closely with Vienna’s Security Police to establish the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, which he sadistically established in the “Aryanized” Palais Albert Rothschild in Vienna, which they had confiscated from Louis Van Rothshild.

By May 17, 1939, nearly 130,000 Jews left Austria under the forced emigration policy. Most of the Jews’ assets were “legally” taken by the Germans through various taxes and exit permit requirements. When Jews tried to emigrate to Switzerland, the Swiss responded by asking Germany to mark the passports with a J, for Jew, so they would know who to refuse. Austrian Jews went wherever they could — to England, France, Czechoslovakia, America, Shanghai, Africa, Australia, and Argentina.

During the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, the city’s synagogues were burned down, and 4,000 Jewish stores and businesses were vandalized and ransacked. The only synagogue that remained was the central synagogue, which had been hidden from street view due to the law. Perhaps this was also so the fire wouldn’t spread to the nearby Hotel Metropol, which was the headquarters for the Nazi party. During Kristallnacht, over 6,500 Austrian Jews were deported to Dachau and Buchenwald.

Beginning in October 1941, 35,000 Viennese Jews were deported to the ghettos of Minsk, Riga, and Lodz, as well as Theresienstadt and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. By the end of 1942, only 8,102 Jews remained in the city. These Jews were eventually taken to the largest concentration camp in Austria, Mauthausen.

Before the war, there were approximately 190,000 Jews in Austria. Only 5,816 lived to see the liberation of Austria, and 65,459 Austrian Jews were murdered. This was a smaller percentage than in other countries because the Austrian Jews were initially forced to emigrate.

Compared to other countries, there were very few Austrians who tried to save Jews. Yad Vashem lists Righteous Among the Nations who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Austria ranks 18th, with only 113 individuals listed. Even more telling, Simon Wiesenthal — who lived in Vienna after the war — is quoted as having said, “Only eight percent of the population of the Third Reich were Austrians. [However] Austrians were responsible for half of the murder of Jews perpetrated under Nazi rule.”

Jewish Life in Vienna After the Holocaust

In April 1945, the Vienna Jewish Community re-established itself, although very few Viennese Jews returned to Vienna to live after the war. They were rebuffed when they attempted to reclaim their homes and other properties. Vienna was also a Displaced Persons camp for Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe.

In the decades after the Holocaust, Austria has had a very mixed approach to their Jewish citizens. On the one hand, when the Soviets allowed Jews to leave, there was a transit camp in Vienna for them in route to Israel. A few years later, when Iranian Jews escaped Iran after the Shah’s fall, and they needed a stop-over place, they used the same transit camp.

On the other hand, open antisemitism continues to be prevalent and acceptable in Austria. Among other examples, in 1986, Austrians elected Kurt Waldheim, a Nazi collaborator, as President of Austria. This was despite his role in World War II as an interpreter and intelligence officer for the German army unit that deported most of the 56,000 Jews of Salonika to their deaths. Understandably, the US Ambassador to Austria, Ronald S. Lauder, refused to attend Waldheim’s inauguration.

In 2000, the extremist right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), led by Jörg Haider, a man with open neo-Nazi sympathies, entered the Austrian government. After Haider publicly made antisemitic comments against Ariel Muzicant, President of the Federation of Austrian Jewish Communities, Israel chose to recall its ambassador in protest. After talks in Jerusalem with the Austrian foreign minister, full relations were restored in 2003.

Due to public pressure, in the late 1980s, the Austrian government began reexamining its role in the Holocaust, revising the “Austrian Victim Myth” they had clung to since World War II. In 1991, Chancellor Franz Vranitzky gave a speech to the Austrian parliament in which he acknowledged the shared responsibility of Austrians for the suffering inflicted on the country’s Jewish community. In July 1993, Vranitzky reiterated this admission in a speech before the Israeli Knesset.

Additionally, Austria began instituting several programs and incentives to support Holocaust education and fight antisemitism.

Today, there is a growing Jewish population in Vienna. It primarily consists of descendants of survivors, and Eastern European refugees from the post-Holocaust era. There are also Russian and Iranian Jews who came to Vienna for its transit camp and chose to stay rather than continue to other destinations. Recently, there has also been a growing Israeli population. Vienna has approximately 15,000 Jews registered in its community, although the actual number of Jews is likely higher.

Most Jewish institutions, organizations, and kosher restaurants are in the historically Jewish area of Leopoldstadt, which is the central Jewish district. The Stadttempel, the only synagogue that survived the Holocaust, houses the community offices and chief rabbinate. The synagogue has limited visiting hours and heavy security due to the August 1981 terrorist attack by Palestinian terrorists. Remarkably, many of the synagogue’s members do not live in Vienna. They support the community because their great-grandparents were synagogue members, and they have strong emotional ties to the community.

Today, Vienna’s Jewish community is regarded as one of the most dynamic in the European Union, yet it is a shadow of its Golden Age greatness. Vienna’s more significant impact is its lesson for eternity: Jews may be successful, powerful, and influential. They may be government leaders, successful businessman, and famous academics. Yet, if there exists unchecked antisemitism in the community, the Jewish position remains precarious.

Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was originally published by Aish.

The post The Jews in Vienna: A Troubled History, and a Warning for Today (PART TWO) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”

He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.

But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.

He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”

He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.

He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.

He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.

He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”

Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.

“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.

SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY

Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.

Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.

Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.

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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly

US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.

A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.

Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.

On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.

WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”

“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.

“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.

JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel

Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.

The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.

While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.

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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis

Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot

Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.

“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”

Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.

“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.

Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.

She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.

The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”

Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”

The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.

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